Semblance of Eden
by Greekhoop
Summary: When a routine job brings her back to a city from her past, Dominique has to decide how far she's willing to go to protect Legato, and what she'll do to keep a secret. COMPLETE.
1. High Plains Drifter

**Semblance of Eden 1 ~ Once Upon a Time in the West**

Some of it doesn't belong to me, some of it does. I'll bet you can tell the difference.

It's been a while since I worked on this, but I think I'm going to go ahead and try to finish it up. I've never read the manga, even after all these years, so this will be entirely based on the anime.

Chapters 1-11 have been edited. New stuff starts at 12.

* * *

It's a chilly night. Strange how everything gets cold so fast when the sun goes down, and the evening sweeps across the desert like another ice age. In the hollow between the shadows, as the red tint on the horizon fades and a certain blue descends, I want to imagine… glaciers groaning across a sea of dunes. Packing the sand to rock beneath their bulk, driving splinters of stone into the earth. I want a westward migration, the scattered corpses of men and dogs. I want the sensation of my lungs contracting from the cold, my hair freezing to my cheeks, my breath billowing in clouds before me…

It's not that I don't like the desert. You can get away with murder here – and I often have. I take one of Victor's cigarettes from the pack on the table, and light it against the chill.

Victor won't care. He's been dead for hours.

His corpse is stiffening in the corner, and the gun that painted the wall with half his head is tucked under my coat. I didn't want him watching me scrub the blood from my hands, but I still don't remember how long ago I bent over him and closed his one remaining eye.

_Now we're even, old friend…_

I may be going a little mad. True, I haven't exactly been what you could call sane these past few years, but this is a special breed of madness. I've never liked killing assassins; it gets all the wrong people talking. But Victor had this coming. The questions he was asking me – about a stranger in a white coat – and the way he was asking them implied that soon enough he would be taking them to the men he believed to be our mutual superiors.

And I couldn't have that.

With my back pressed against the window like this, I can feel the cold like the point of a knife poised between my shoulder blades. It must be slowing me down. My blood is thick in my veins.

And I think: You have to tighten up, Dominique. You can't keep dropping off like this. I'll blame the cold. Blame the gun holstered against my ribs, Victor's questions, the fiberglass lumps of brain and bone splattered across the wallpaper.

I'll blame anything but what it really is.

Feels sometimes like I'm standing beneath a bleach-white sky, staring up into brilliant double suns and praying for rain. But God doesn't answer prayers from people like me, does he? And so it's no use praying for something I'll never see outside my dreams.

Nothing had changed… but everything could. I only need to wake up, stop sleepwalking. I've been half-dead these past months, it seems. So maybe this was just what I needed, something to snap me out of this damn trance.

Then again, maybe I need something else entirely.

I take out my watch and glance at it and it's been three weeks, two days, nine hours, forty-seven minutes, and twelve – make that thirteen – seconds since I last saw Legato Bluesummers. And the way things are going, I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever see him again. When I close my eye, I catch a rush of pale fabric out of the corner of my vision, and when I breathe in, it drowns out everything but the cold laughter just beyond the fringe of my perception.

And I think, this is it. This is really it. I've finally lost it completely. It doesn't exactly come as a surprise.

But it's freeing, too. Maybe more freeing than frightening. As though, with madness, there descends also clarity. I'm a woman possessed, no longer to be held accountable for my actions. And that is why I step away from the window, fluidly. I don't feel any hesitation; in fact, I don't feel much of anything at all when I tip the lamp on the table so oil spills in a murky pool on the floor, the same swirling translucence as a sheet of ice.

It's time to send Victor to Valhalla.

I tap the ash from my cigarette, and the way the smoke curls and bows to the ceiling shakes me awake somehow. I drop the butt to the ground and the oil catches, so fast I have to step back and it can only lick at my boots like a wounded animal.

I slip into the hall and shut the door behind me against a wall of black smoke. Further down, a pair of yellowy eyes glare at me from the shadows. A little black cat, startled by the tread of my boots on hardwood. It bristles, hisses and spits at me, and then it catches the scent of smoke creeping now under Victor's door and with an irritated yowl disappears out the window at the end of the hall.

It's good. The little things like that, they're what find new ways to make me feel guilty. The innocent things'll get you every time.

Outside, I turn back. Just for a moment, long enough to see flames creeping over Victor's windowsill before I take off running down the street. I feel strangely content, satisfied, as though the hard part is over at last. But maybe it's just that I feel more awake than I have in weeks, that I'm on my way back to Dimitri, to…

To hell with that. I'll never get anywhere thinking that way. I catch the red-eye sand steamer and try to remind myself that I'm not rational anymore, that I'm crazed and wild and liable to do anything.

I sleep for an hour, but I keep my eye open the whole time.

Outside Rushmore Town, I almost miss it but I think I'm being tailed. The man in the dark duster, and the blue-eyed girl with him… I duck into an antique shop and browse a row of cheap china until I'm certain I've shaken them.

I almost buy Legato a little teapot in the shape of a duck.

But I steal a car instead, a fast one that looks like it can get me across the desert. I'm in the warm throes of obsession now; I'll be in Dimitri before nightfall. Breathing his air again, listening to his voice… I wonder, is this what it feels like to be him? To be so driven, single-minded, determined? Maybe this means I'm not as hopeless as he thinks I am.

Just before town, I ditch the car on the side of a dune, and I have this picture in my mind of sand - just sand - driven by the wind, corroding the paint striping the leather. Covering it. Until there's nothing left that says I once passed this way. It'll happen faster than you would think out here. If I died in the desert, it would take two days for sandstorms to peel the flesh from my bones.

I drift into Dimitri close to sunset, just when the desert is starting to cool off. I hardly feel it this time, though. Something fanatical and feverish is driving me into a town already barred against the night. It's disappointing, somehow, that no one can be here, that there isn't anyone to bear witness to my sweeping madness, to what must be a feral gleam in my eye, a reckless curl to my lips, almost a smile.

And then I catch it, footsteps at my back. Silent and clever, just behind me and on my blindside. My hand goes to the pistol beneath my coat, but something keeps me from drawing. I think I give off an aura of lunacy - Danger! Rabid animal! Exercise extreme caution! Proceed at your own risk! – and I like that, even though by now, I know, I should have turned and by now I should have my gun pressed to the stranger's temple and by now he should be looking puzzled and by now he should be bleeding into the dirt… You get the picture.

"Dominique."

Something curls inside me, and I turn, and what must be a rather foolish, wild grin is tugging at the corners of my mouth. I face him across a wheel-rut in the street, and it might as well be the Red Sea.

"Legato." I nod. "I'm back."


	2. The Proposition

**Semblance of Eden 2 ~ The Proposition**

"I am aware of that." His voice is low and lethal, and he takes a single measured step toward me. God, he's so beautiful when he's dangerous. "I do not, however, recall ever giving you permission to leave."

Oh, right. That.

"Urgent personal business." I tilt my chin back just enough, so that he knows he'll never find out exactly how personal. Not unless he asks me _really_ nicely. "What seems to be the problem?"

"You don't have personal business anymore, Dominique." If only he knew how close to the truth that really is. He takes another deliberate step forward, and he was a little in the shadows until now. Not so dark that I couldn't see his face, but then he steps toward me, into the light, and everything falls into place. Like a clip locking into a gun, I'm whole again. Complete.

"I know, sir. I'm very sorry." My throat tightens in reproach. I'm not sorry. Whatever petty transgression he thinks I've committed, I'll never be sorry for it. But that isn't the lie that pains me the most.

I look down. Coupled with the words, it's a ridiculously humble gesture, and I'm surprised he doesn't laugh aloud at me. Hell, I'd laugh if I could. "It won't happen again."

He's quiet for a minute, and I think sincere thoughts. Just to be on the safe side. Even so, he's probably trying to figure out which arm he wants to dislocate this time. That seems to be his favorite mode of communication lately.

But nothing happens and the silence turns thick as a cloud between us, so I finally look up. That was a mistake. It's the eyes, the heat lightning eyes. It must be. The thousand-yard stare. The way he's looking right through me, like I'm not even here at all. "Do you want to go inside?"

"Go… inside?" He repeats it slowly, but it's not because he's confused.

"Yeah. Go inside? Sit down? I could buy you a slice of pie?" Hell, I'm the last person he wants buying him pie. He probably still thinks I'll slip some arsenic in it while he's not looking.

"Don't try to change the subject."

I watch him close, just waiting for his eyelid to twitch like it always does right before my body twists out from under me, and I'm on my back in the dirt, trying not to scream. I like to pretend it hurts less if I know it's coming.

But it never does. "Change the subject, sir?" I manage to sound a little frightened, even though I can hardly even hear myself over my own racing pulse. I wonder briefly how I've managed to stay alive just this long. When I can't even think straight. When all I know with any clarity is that I want to fall against him, pull him down with me as I sink to my knees right here in the street. "I only thought you might want to talk about this over a drink."

"There's nothing to talk about, Dominique." The wind shifts suddenly, as though the entire planet has just tilted on his axis. Because he steps closer to me one last time. I have to look away again; he's like a Siren up close. "I talk, and you listen. If I ask you a question, you may answer. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

He's silent for sometime after that, and his words almost seem to make a sound as they sink into the air between us. The hissing of water on thirsty ground. "Do you think I… trust you?"

That word. _Trust._ He sounds entirely too amused when he says it, as though the whole idea is something childish. Unimaginably naïve. "No, sir, I don't." Of course not. I don't dare ask for his trust. He doesn't trust anyone, does he? At least, no one he should.

"Do you know why?" His eyes are on me again. Twin rivets, molten glass cooling against my skin. Taking my shape. Then something forces my chin up and I have no choice but to meet his gaze.

"I suppose you have your reasons, sir." And I realize he's not holding me anymore. But I don't look away. His eyes shift, swirl in the light like whirlpools of contaminated water. This is the first time I've noticed it, I've never watched this long before.

"Trust, Dominique, is a very frail thing. Do you understand? It must be earned, not given freely." He's lying. He trusts more freely than any of us. His is the trust that lures children into the backs of unmarked vans. That leaves fourteen-year-old girls knocked up, penniless and bruised on the side of the road…

The corner of his lips curls a little. He heard that, damn it. Clearly as if I'd spoken it aloud. For the third time in five minutes I'm waiting for the pain that never comes. When did he become such a pacifist? "I know, sir. I don't presume to ask for your trust. But if only you knew how devoted…"

He nods slowly, as though he's pleased. But I doubt that. "That's good to know. But, how can I believe that if I can't trust you? And how can I trust you if I don't know where you've been, Dominique?" His voice twists on the last word, an upward curl of sound. And my right arm is behind my back, straining awkwardly toward my left shoulder.

"Legato!" If only my voice sounded a little steadier. But I can feel him around me like heat waves, and the sound of his breathing echoes with my own

My shoulder slides out of place much easier than it used to. Bone only bends so far; this won't be the first time he's broken my arm as cleanly as a bit of sun-dry kindling…

And then he lets me go. Rushes out of me like a tide. It's so abrupt that for a moment I still have the taste of him untainted by pain. Then my hand falls limply back at my side, and I have to press my shoulder tight to my side to keep it from sagging. "Legato…"

"Why did you come back here?" he asks suddenly, sharply.

I shake my head a little. I can't think, damnit, I'm still trying to catch my breath. Can't he see I'm no threat like this? "I told you I was devoted." But he doesn't look away, and I'm prone as a butterfly in his collection beneath that gaze.

"Babylon."

The voice hardly sounds like my own. Too jagged. Too much of an edge. But his eyebrow lifts… might be intrigue, might be disgust. Either way, I can't leave it at that. "Do you know a town called Babylon?"

"What about it?"

"Legato…" For a moment I'm caught by the feel of his name in my mouth. The curve of my lips to fit it, and the way everything else spills out in its wake like the tail of a kite. "I need your help."

He's shaking his head faintly. "Why would I help you?"

"Because you owe me." It's no good trying to appeal to a sense of justice I know he doesn't have, but it feels good to say the words aloud. He owes me. He has no idea how much, and I'm not going to tell him. I've already promised myself that, when I die, it at least won't be by his hand, thank you very much.

"Is that what you think?" The look he gives me goes down about as smooth as a handful of broken glass. "Are you so valuable to me?"

He's right, of course. He doesn't need me, not in this. But damn him for bringing it up, because it's not my pride he hurts. It's something different, so new and raw that there isn't any armor to cover it yet. "Look, they know me too well there. I just need someone who can get me some information."

"Concerning what?"

I squirm a little with the next words. I don't mean to, it's just that he almost sounded interested. "I can't tell you. Come with me tomorrow and you'll see."

"I can't leave this town so easily." The pitch of his voice, I know exactly what he's talking about. Damnit, I know better than to argue with him when Knives is in the picture too.

I've never met him, you know. The man behind the curtain. I used to be curious, but now… Now, I've seen the bruises on his face, the ones he thinks are pale enough that no one will notice. The way it hurts him to move sometimes.

"Ask him, then. He'll know. Ask him what happened there."

"I can't." And for a moment, there's a hint of something indescribably in his voice. I can't quite pinpoint it, but it's there, in his eyes too. "Forget about it, Dominique. It doesn't matter now."

"It _does_ matter. If you'd just listen to me—" But I won't beg him, I won't. I don't need anyone that badly, so if I can't keep the pitch of my voice from rising that way I won't say any more to him.

"Go inside," he tells me, but there's no friendliness in the words. "I've kept your room at the request of your comrades." I look up. I don't mean to stare so blankly, but I'm sure I didn't hear right. Is he taking me back?

I should know better than to trust an offer like this, one that sounds so good, but I've spent the last three weeks with one hand permanently on the hilt of my gun, watching the shadows for movement and checking my hotel rooms for wiretaps. You don't really get tired when you're on your guard like that, but I'm home now. The closest thing to home I've got. I feel like I've been biting back a yawn ever since I stepped into town.

I'm sleepy. He's offering me a bed, and that isn't helping. I could sleep here, really sleep, secure in the knowledge that this is the only place no one would dare come look for me. I watch him, searching, but there's nothing in his expression. That's fine. I'll go back without him if I have to, and pray that there's a shred of understanding in him.

Not that I'll live long enough to find out.

"Wake me up if you change your mind," I say after I've realized I'm staring, and then I turn. Towards the hotel, the yellow half-light halo that spills from its windows and into the street. "Goodnight, Legato."

But I don't expect an answer.


	3. Bend of the River

**Semblance of Eden 3 ~ Bend of the River**

I'm not even sure how all of this began. It's as though, for as long as I can remember it just _was_. It's not lust. Because lust is only one fragment of what it really is. He is, somehow, all parts of me: Everything I am, he's already cornered the market on. Everything I want to be, everything I fear and abhor and denounce and loathe. Everything I desire, I have ever desired.

That's what he is.

Can't all be like him, thank god. Can't all enjoy suffering at the whims of the one man we'd die for just one kind word from. But he's the drug habit you keep insisting you can shake. Wherever I am, I'm not alone anymore.

It's also really more trouble than it's worth sometimes.

And I don't even know why, but I'm standing at the bar in the lobby on the first floor of my hotel. It's something as dreary as habit that's lifting my voice to order whiskey, no ice, clean glass please… Because that's the taste of this city. The taste that reminds me I'm home and I'm alive, still, somehow, even though I've already died a hundred times over, and my bones were buried long ago beneath sand and wind and sand.

But there's something else, too. Something that doesn't taste but that lingers like the sting of copper – a coin or a bit of wire - under my tongue. And it's what I was really after. The faint static charge that only he has, that carries in his voice, and in his fingertips. In his will when he wraps me in it. That is with me now, hardly even faded. I don't need the liquor to help me sleep as long as I have that. Close my eyes just right, and it could be like falling into his arms.

It's not the way I should be thinking, I know that. Even so fresh from his presence – proximity that confirmed all those uneasy suspicions shaped by a drive through the desert with nothing but dust and sun and bones and no perspective at all – I can't help but think it's somehow wrong. For a man like that, for a woman like me.

It's blasphemy, that's what it is.

And in my head, I hear a dead man's laughter. I hear a dead man chiding me for using such superstitious terms, in a voice ominous and empty like the grave.

Blasphemy, he tells me, is a hollow expression. Any meaning it once had was lost a long time ago, like footprints after a sand storm. For words like that to apply, he says with a thin lifeless laugh, something would still have to be sacred.

We don't need religion; we just need a miracle.

I don't know if those words, spoken to me long ago in a room cooled by machinery, are truth, or just some monstrous approximation of fact, gutted like the frame of a car. But I will accept them without question for now. I have more important things to worry about.

The empty glass on the bar is refilled before I can wave the bartender away. I'll be paying for it anyway, so I reach for it right-handed, and instantly I'm remembering the events of the street with a new kind of clarity as my dislocated shoulder begins to throb all over again. I should have been able to hide my wince better than I do – never know who's watching after all.

I lift the glass anyway, and toss it back in a fit of silly defiance. I could justify it if I told myself that movement is probably the best thing for an injury like that, but I don't.

Again, that voice in my head, choked with dust. He's telling me now to keep my wits about me. He's telling me that I have a purpose and that's all anyone can hope for in this world.

These are the words of the man who made me what I am. The man who saved my life and taught me how to kill. But they are also the words of a dead man, and I don't have to listen to them. It's made me laugh before and it almost makes me laugh again now, when I think that this is the closet thing to ideology I've ever had, the closest thing to faith.

If I were drunker or stupider, I might say that I have something more important than that now, and again that word without meaning – blasphemy – springs to my mind. I can brush it away now, like a bit of dust from the hem of my coat; I can leave it next to my empty glass on the bar instead of a tip.

My room is small, and nothing in it but a toothbrush and a change of clothes in the closet belong to me. It's comforting in a way, returning to someplace so sterile and so familiar. Someplace that knows better than to ask questions of me. I lock the door firmly behind me, and my clothes fall in a breadcrumb trail across the room in my wake.

I stand naked before the little sliver of glass that passes for a mirror and try to cajole my shoulder back into place. My arm will be worthless in the morning if I leave it this way, but fifteen minutes pass, then twenty, and then I'm too angry to do any good anyway.

I curse at my reflection, because it refreshes me.

My eye patch fastens at the nape of my neck with half a dozen intricate buckles and straps, and I unwind them with the same efficiency as cleaning a gun. Some nights, this thing is just too damn heavy, and the cool night air stings the flesh around my Eye that has been too long out of the sun. And I know… it shouldn't feel like anything, but a faint chill always slides down my spine the moment I know I've disappeared from the radar. That I'm free, even if it's just for a few minutes. Talk about a devil on your shoulder…

I arrange the eye patch and my gun on the bedside table, well within reach. They look at home right there, almost like a still life, and I think fleetingly that they're beautiful, and then that I know better than that. And even if I'm insane now, it's no excuse.

Clean sheets and the cool side of the pillow can be fairly underrated pleasures. I pull my knees up and hug the edge of the blanket tight. Just like the girl I haven't been in a long time, I think. When I close the Demon's Eye, there's a brief shuddering moment of awareness, the instant I know I'm fading back into focus like the haze breaking on a corrupt videotape. The instant I'm real again.

I wonder sometimes how much longer my luck is going to hold up. I made it across the desert. I'm here, and that's a definite plus. On the other hand, I've lost my mind. And by now somebody out there's probably after me for killing Victor. I'll just add him to the list, alongside all the other people who are after me for all the other things.

But it's a comfort to know that I've done all this for a reason. And that my reason is staying just a couple doors down.

I like to pretend, just before I sleep, that the air smells faintly of him.


	4. The Tall Men

**Semblance of Eden 4 ~ The Tall Men**

"Hey! Who do I have to kill to get a decent cup of coffee around this dump?"

Nothing quite like waking up to the sound of someone shouting. It'll happen more often than I care to think about now that I'm back among the living. I open my eyes to a curtain of indigo hair, wisps that cling to my lashes like leftover moisture and a haze of fresh sunlight streaming through shutters I forgot to close before I slept last night.

That, and the distinct feeling that I've been run over by a Sandsteamer. A quick inventory is enough to convince me of what I've known since last night: I'm a wreck. My shoulder is throbbing, and when I try to lift myself on my elbows I can't quite get my arm under me.

I must be grinning like an idiot.

I get up slowly. In the drawer next to my bed, beside the spare revolver and the bowie knife, the vial of poison and the coil of piano wire, there's a half-empty bottle of dark liquid. Scraps of label still cling to the glass like shreds of clothing from a torture victim, but it hasn't been anything you could read in a long time.

I take a swallow, a long one. It tastes thick and greasy, like old coffee or raw sewage or maybe a little of both. Take another swallow and this one goes down easier. It numbs me – the ache in my shoulder in any case - enough that I can struggle into my clothes, buckle my gun into place beneath my coat. I can feel it against my ribs like a fist when I move. There are all these little things I never used to notice, like the heft of metal every time I breathe.

This morning, it feels like all the tiny pieces that I thought I lost along the way are finally starting to shake out of my clothes and my hair like watch screws.

I clasp my eye patch into place – it's awkward with one hand - and head for the hallway, and it's then that I hear my name over the clatter of dishes and the wind-like hum of voices from downstairs.

"Dominique!"

I'm worse off then I thought if I forgot to check the stairs as I left my room. Even if I recognize that voice that shapes the syllables of my name, surely we both know it could have just as easily been a rifle report.

"Hey, Dominique!"

I lift a hand to him to quiet him, pass the back of my fingers over my mouth quickly so he won't see the smile I'm still trying to hide. I turn, just as he reaches the top of the stairs.

"Morning, Mr. Saxophone."

But he's not alone this morning, and that's all it takes to chill the genuine right out of my grin. I nod to our company.

"Preacher…" He doesn't even need to say anything anymore to make me uneasy, doesn't even need to look at me. But there's something about him that I can't bear. This is a recent development, like a fever. I skirt him like quicksand and lean against the wall – casually, I hope – because it takes some of the pressure off my shoulder.

Wolfwood lifts his chin just a little. "Damn, Patch, I was wondering if I'd ever see you around here again."

"You know I can't leave you alone."

He laughs, and says, "This is all about us, then?"

I open my mouth to answer, but then that magenta-wrapped arm slides around his waist and I've forgotten what I was about to say. I think I'll never get used to that, only because these are the people I know and these are the people I trust as far as trust can be stretched in the desert.

They're cautious, they wouldn't be here if they didn't know what they were doing. But what they're proposing is love in a season of plagues. If I really thought they were wrong, I tell myself I'd tell them, even if I am the last person who should be giving advice on the subject.

"The boss wants to see you now that you're back, Dominique." Midvalley sounds serious enough that I'd be worried if it weren't for…

"Thanks for the advance warning." One hand drifts up to rub at the aching spot above my collarbone.

"He got you good, did he?"

I shrug. Lopsidedly. "Not so good."

"Ha! You've got the Devil's luck," he says.

I watch Wolfwood's eyes narrow a little. He hasn't looked over his shoulder once, hasn't shifted against the body at his back. I'll give him credit for that much. "Maybe the boss just likes her."

He's aware of what he's saying; I don't doubt that. Midvalley knows more than he lets on, more then I've ever needed to tell him. And what he knows is this choirboy's common knowledge.

I shake my head. Denial was the defensive technique I learned first, years before parries or counterattacks. "Maybe he just knows I'm the best he's got."

"And modest too." Grinning, Midvalley slides out from behind Wolfwood, trailing his hand idly over the rise of his hips. He thinks I won't notice. But I notice. "Let me have a look at your shoulder, Patch."

"It's all right." It's an automatic response to twist out of his way, but he dodges to follow my retreat, and his hands fall – one on my collarbone, the other on the rise of my bicep.

"Sure it's all right. That why you can't move it, Dominique?"

"You're a smart-ass." And I'm gonna tell him where to go – I really am – but he twists his hands hard, and with a sick-sounding crack I can feel bone slide back into place.

I turned a little pale, if the lazy curl of Midvalley's lip is any indication, and my knees go weak for an instant. It'll be a second before I'm certain my voice won't quiver when I try to talk. "God_damnit_. That… really hurt."

He opens his mouth to answer me, then shuts it again, and his eyes slide past me, to the end of the hall. I don't need to look up to know. there's only one person who can coax that kind of a response from him.

Some things really never will change.

I surprise myself a little when I don't turn until he's only a step behind me. Don't I know better than that? A sharp golden gaze slides over us; it feels distinctly like he's trying to figure out which one of us has been in the cookie jar. And when his eyes settle on mine, it feels like I've been tried and convicted and sentenced in just that single instant before the next blink separates us.

"How is your shoulder this morning, Dominique?" There's something hiding in his voice, something that's almost humor, but is actually more like cruelty.

"Better, sir." It's an answer with none of the venom of my words the night before.

"Good. See that it heals." He narrows his eyes a bit, and his expression shifts a little. It isn't until he looks away again, though, that I realize it was a change meant only for me. "We're moving out before noon," he announces.

I catch myself before my jaw drops completely, and my lips only part a little, as though to ask a question I haven't quite thought of yet. At least Midvalley's there to cover for me: "Where exactly are we going, Boss?"

He smiles. One of those rare smiles of genuine amusement; I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen that smile before. "South." His eyebrow curves elegantly. "A city called Babylon."


	5. Blood for a Silver Dollar

**Semblance of Eden 5 ~ Blood for a Silver Dollar**

Twice in the past, I've taken a bullet, and that's plenty of times to know that there's a certain sensation of weightlessness, detachment, that accompanies a high-caliber round tearing through your flesh.

I've got that feeling again now.

Only this time, there's no pain to follow it up, no abrupt and sobering loss of blood to recenter me, force me to move again. I'm a mile up in the air, with nothing to bring me back to earth.

And I refuse to believe that Legato doesn't know what it's like to be left on the edge like this; that's probably why he looks away so casually, leaves me stretching my toes to put some solid ground beneath them once more.

"I'll take care of it," Midvalley says, even though he – even though both of them by now – are shifting glances between us as though trying to break an elaborate code. Reluctantly, he turns to go, and reluctantly Wolfwood follows him.

"What the hell's going on, Legato?" I force myself to wait until after they've disappeared down the stairwell before I speak, and once the words are out they ground me and I can think clearly again. There's just a little residual unease gnawing at the pit of my stomach like a trapped animal.

He looks calm, though. Cool as winter. "Just as I said: we're leaving." Smug. "Is that not acceptable?" Bastard.

"But why the sudden change of heart?" He doesn't have any patience for questions, but he can't leave me in the dark again. I'm not going to let him. "Why Babylon?"

His eyes narrow a little, and I know that where I'm going right now is somewhere angels never, ever tread. "I don't know what that city means to you, Dominique," he says darkly. "But I have my orders, and so it's nothing to me."

"You don't know anything, do you?" And I wish that once - just this once - I could grab him, shake him, or maybe just reach up and slap that tight, too-certain smile right off his face. Anything to make him listen to me.

"Not nearly as much as you know, I'm beginning to suspect," he says in a tone that tells me what I've known, what I should have been thinking of all this time: that it would only take the slightest effort for him to see all my secrets.

I think we've really been connecting lately; I'd hate for it to all end over something stupid like that. But the way he's looking at me now, I'm starting to wonder if maybe I shouldn't be tying up my finances, setting all my affairs in order for the end. Baking the last batch of brownies…

I brace myself.

And he turns away.

"Your secrets are of little consequence to me, Dominique. We will proceed whether you wish to tell me or not."

What a fucking laugh… I can't help a soft sigh of relief.

He turns back at that, and his eyes flash briefly. He tilts his head to the side, like a bird. Not a cute little friendly sparrow; no, more like a huge hungry vicious bird of prey. The kind of bird with six-foot-long wings, talons that can crush bone, and a beak sharp enough to eat your heart right out of you while you watch. "Indeed."

"Indeed? Sir?" It's all I can think to say, and it's hollow and hopeless.

"Dominique." The slight upward curl of his lips, the formation of tiny lines in the corners of his eyes, are the only phantoms of emotion he lets surface. He's a mask. "Your behavior is rather… erratic."

I stumble back a step; that was the last thing I expected from him. It's instinct – the kind of thing that keeps animals alive in the wild, not that there are many animals around here anymore – that my first inclination is to apologize, but he's not accusing me of anything. He only sounds quietly curious. Though in his dialect I wonder if those might not be almost the same thing.

"I'm just tired, Sir," I settle for at last. Not tired physically. Tired _of _a few things, that's probably a little more accurate. Tired of running, of lying. Tired of blood and the smell of smoke and of lovers with hands like sandpaper, bone hard from the recoils of too many pistol shots. "Just… very tired."

He moves in a swirl of ivory coattails, to pass me, to slip away down the hall without another word, as though in an instant I've suddenly become uninteresting, inconsequential to him. We're nearly touching before he stops once more, closer than I thought he would ever dream of allowing someone.

He doesn't wear amusement well; it clings statically to the yellow of his irises, hitching up in the corners of his mouth like a cheap suit.

"Well, don't stay gone so long next time." He's practically purring. Basilisk eyes flash briefly to mine, and then he moves again. A spike of black shoulder armor trails – just barely – over the outside of my shoulder blade as he slips past, accurate and sobering as the point of a switchblade.

"Legato…"

But my mouth feels dry, and by the time I manage his name, I've already given up on anything else.

At the top of the stairwell, he doesn't turn, doesn't even pause, but over his shoulder: "Don't expect me to wait up again."

And when he's gone, I hate to admit it, but I can't help feeling a little – well, maybe a lot – relieved. Another notch on the barrel of my pistol, I suppose. I tip my head slightly, to bury a smirk in the rise of my coat collar. It's not quite like any emotion I want to try to explain right now.

I've got nothing to look forward to but another long and dusty trek through the desert; I've got nothing to rely on but a mouthful of lies.

Things should always be this good.

"Asshole," I mutter, but around a grin I can't seem to shake. "Miserable asshole."


	6. The Wild Bunch

**Semblance of Eden 6 ~ The Wild Bunch**

Evasive.

That's the only word for it. For this thing that drives us and defies logic at every turn and dodges every attempt at an explanation.

All right, so I'm going to die. I've accepted this with remarkable grace if I do say so myself, and now I'm ready to move on to the next phase. So what? People do it every day. But, contrary to appearances, dying has never been high on my to-do list, and so I wonder if maybe it isn't a little bit odd that I haven't exactly bothered to put up a fight.

Don't get me wrong, he hasn't said we're going to die, every single one of us, without a doubt, better make our peace now. But he's implied it. And even his most off-hand suggestions a way of becoming truth, somehow.

This would all be so much easier if I could just make myself hate him. Hell, I _want _to hate him. I want to loathe him with the kind of passionate, overwhelming loathing that dulls my very consciousness and moves my trigger finger without bothering to consult me first…

I've killed handsomer and more determined men than him in the past. There shouldn't be anything to it anymore.

Halfway down the stairs, it occurs to me suddenly that running is still an option. Even this late in the game I could be out of here, far away from this city before anyone even knew I was gone. It wouldn't be the first time; I know almost as much about running these days as I do about standing to fight.

But I'm sure already, that isn't an option either. If I ran now, not only would I never be coming back to this place, I'd never be going back to Babylon. And I can't allow that, not yet. I still owe them something there, even if I haven't yet decided the best way to pay off my debt.

Too much dirty work is going to make me soft. If you can adapt, if you can make yourself used to it, then murder is the easiest business in the world. The only really hard part is admitting that.

I wonder what Legato would say.

Probably nothing at all. But thinking I could coax a reaction out of him is enough to keep me content for now. Of all the exotic locales my wandering mind has stranded us in since I met him, the ones where he laughs are always the ones I keep returning to.

As soon as I hit the ground floor, Midvalley sidles up to me with a whiskey in each hand and a saxophone reed sticking out of the corner of his mouth like a half-gone smoke.

"Isn't it, like, six in the morning?" I say.

"Five-thirty." He thrusts one of the shot glasses in my direction. "It's better than coffee."

I try to wave him off, but the glass is already in my hand, and I'm already tossing it back and trying not to scowl too deeply. It's too early to match wits with Midvalley, too.

"How do you feel?"

Somehow, I manage to swallow without choking to death. Somehow…

You have to understand, a question like that just isn't the sort of thing you come to expect from a guy like him; it makes me suspicious in all sorts of ways I thought I'd gotten over a long time ago. But he's watching me closely over the chipped rim of his glass, one eyebrow drawn up like it is when he sizes up something that looks like a potential fight. I know that look too well, and so it feels like a long time goes by before I can answer him.

"I'm fine. Why?"

"Babylon's your hometown, isn't it?" He sighs, setting the glass aside. "It's not gonna break my heart of you want to sit this one out."

"Aren't you the sweetest little thing?"

"That's not it." The look that goes with those words is arsenic. "It's my ass if these things don't run as smoothly as the Boss thinks they should, you know, and I…"

"Midvalley." I'm surprised by how sharp my voice sounds, and I guess he is too because he stops talking for what's gotta be the first time in his whole damn life. "I'm going to that city."

He sighs. "All right, all right. I ain't gonna step on your toes, Patch."

"I don't need you to look out for me." It's been a hell of a long time since I needed to say something like that to anyone, and feels so ridiculous now that I almost can't be offended.

"Yeah, yeah, I know that." He sighs again, but this time he throws in a dramatic roll of his eyes, and I know we're through here. "I'm just trying to be chivalrous. You're a real damn ice queen, you know that, Patch? "

"Spare me."

"It's freezing in here. Why did it get so cold all of a sudden?" He glances at his empty glass and mutters, "I think I need another drink just to warm up."

I could go for another one myself right about now. But not for the same reasons. "It must take a tremendous amount of effort to be as pathetic as you, Midvalley. I ought to just shoot you and put you out of your misery…"

It's all right to shoot your best friend, isn't it? It must be. Nothing life threatening… what if I just winged him?

"Mmm, flattering." He snatches the pair of shot glasses from the table. "But I've already got someone poking me full of holes, if you know what I mean."

That's appalling. "Don't remind me."

"What's wrong, Dominique? You jealous?"

I've been here before; he's going to keep this up until I lose my temper. There isn't much to do for entertainment in the desert.

"Midvalley…"

Up slants one eyebrow. He looks like he expects me to take a swing at him. Maybe I won't disappoint him.

Listen, I know you can't really blame a man for his sense of timing, even if it borders on the preposterous. It's at that moment that the Preacher saunters up to us. So easily, like he's been waiting in the wings for his entrance to roll around.

"Speak of the Devil," Midvalley says, lightly like stifling laughter.

His dark eyes narrow a little, almost imperceptibly. "That's exactly the problem." His gaze flickers between us like a moth vacillating between two flames. "What's going on?"

"Patch is all bent out of shape about something." Midvalley tilts his chin back, exposing the perfectly fist-sized stretch of flesh above his throat.

"Go to hell."

Wolfwood snorts, stirring cigarette smoke and the quiet cloud of amusement that always seems to float about his shoulders. "What's the matter, Patch? Not looking forward to seeing the old hometown?"

This is ridiculous. "Do you two tell each other everything? You're like a couple of maiden aunts."

"Hey, calm down." Midvalley tosses a weak shrug in my direction. "I don't tell him everything. Just the really good gossip."

"Hey," Wolfwood says, offering up one of those slow, languid chuckles he seems to run low on, "Maybe that explains why we're headed out there. Got some family stirring up trouble, Dominique?"

"My family's dead."

For just an instant, he at least has the decency to look a little embarrassed. I'm putting a mark on my side of the scorecard as we speak.

"Aww." Midvalley circles a step, and one long, slender hand falls on my shoulder, sending up a little puff of dust from my coat. "And look at her, she's all broken up about it."

I brush him away. "That's not the point."

"Then what is?"

Wolfwood leans back against the nearest table with another dry chuckle. "There isn't one. Now _that's_ the whole point."

Midvalley glances at him over my shoulder, and for a moment their eyes meet. A look as significant – and as subtle - as a two-by-four to the back of the skull, a gaze so heated I hope the sparks don't catch in my hair. And for a moment I think, without much reason, I'm sure, that their entire existence can be summed up as obsidian black on smoldering green.

Green being how I feel right now…

Wolfwood breathes a curl of smoke from the corner of his mouth, and his lips twitch upward to follow it. "I'm guessing you haven't told her the good news yet? About her partner?"


	7. The Iron Horse

**Semblance of Eden 7 ~ The Iron Horse**

Listen, I'll tell you something while we wait for these two to stop undressing each other with their eyes:

There are people in this world like Legato, who come from nowhere in particular, move through your life and on, going nowhere in particular. Just like a force of nature. Then there are people like our friend the Preacher, who come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the most significant thing in the world to them and everything they do – their whole damn existence – is focused on that one spot of origin. And they're like the root of a cactus.

And then there are people like me, who come from somewhere, but we can't even remember what that place looked like. We're going somewhere, but we aren't particularly interested in what that place will look like, either. Like a mote of sand swept by the wind, we're defined by where we are at the moment and shaped by the forces that move us, beyond our control.

Did I have a home once? Sure I did.

Do I _call_ it home and get all warm and fuzzy when I think back on it? And do I say things like, when did I stray so far from that place that I could never find it again? I doubt it.

First thing's first, Babylon was never my home. It was just one place I stayed for a while, a holdover due to weather while waiting for the Sandsteamer to leave the station. Do you really think I'd be the same sweet sane well-adjusted person I am today if I was born somewhere like Babylon?

My real home was called Little Boulder. I don't know who decided to name it that, because there really weren't any boulders around, not even little ones. Maybe it was wishful thinking, or maybe it was something else. Those waves and waves of uninterrupted sand as far as the eye can see have a way of making you a little delusional.

Had to have been delusional to live in a place like that.

There wasn't a Plant for a hundred miles, but we were right on a Sandsteamer route. All night long you could hear them groaning with the effort of endless forward progression, like ghosts, only too big to be ghosts. Like ghosts of huge and frightening creatures that roamed this land long before the coming of man.

Good thing they were ghosts, I would think, because something like that sure as hell wouldn't waste anytime in swallowing a town like this in a single bite. Good thing all ghosts did was run screaming through the night and keep people who didn't really want to sleep anyway awake.

Sometimes, when sleep was just too far out of the question to even consider, I would lay awake and listen to the freight wail billowing up from the desert. And after I had lain awake for a long while, I would rise and tug on a coat or something and slip out my bedroom window. I liked the warmth of the sand beneath my bare feet, the air so dry it was like all the oxygen had been dehydrated right out of it.

I had a brother back then, too, and he had said there was a way to see pictures in the stars. I would look up to the sky and concentrate until my eyes ached, but I could never see the things he had told me I was supposed to be able to see.

It was frustrating in that vague kind of way things you don't really care about but think you should are frustrating.

So I had no patience for astronomy. It was probably just as well. Spend all your time gazing up at the stars, and who knows what will pass you by down here on earth. In any case, I was much better at creeping low over the sand dunes, at sticking to the shadows as I slipped past the last house and down toward the valley where the earth was packed flat by the passage of Sandsteamers.

I was six years old and convinced that the only way I could be sure I was alive was to see one of those things bellow by beneath an inky lightless sky up close and personal. Even though I knew what it was, even though the smell of coal and engine grease, and the clang of metal was nothing except intrusively human, there's still something about that exact combination of light and deafening noise and darkness and silence that has a way of awakening an ancient terror in your heart. An adrenaline-rich primordial fear.

Of course, I wasn't thinking anything like that when I slipped out of bed to watch them pass in the post-midnight hours. I was just hoping to catch sight of a ghost.

Isn't that the most pathetic excuse you've ever heard for being alive and talking to you today?

I remember, it was a clear night when it happened. It must have been spring, because the smell of cactus blooms bursts in on my memories like an unwelcome houseguest. If you've never seen the cactus blossoms in the spring, you should know that it really is a remarkable sight. There's only one night out of the year when you can get the full feel of it, only one night when previously gray and barren stretches of desert explode with flowers so white that they seem incandescent in the moonlight. Pollen pours from them in waves, so thick that if you were to pass a hand over your clothes or through your hair, your fingers would come away chalky and pale.

This is how life is created in the desert, with the desperate, urgent, loveless coupling of a thousand white flowers and the night air. This is how baby cacti are made. You have to admire the efficiency, at least.

But what's all this, you say? You didn't come here to have the secrets of a desert night revealed to you. You say: What about tears, Dominique? Did you shed any? What about blood? Certainly some veins were opened that night all those years ago with the Sandsteamers rolling by and the cacti spitting pollen like fine tobacco.

Don't worry about all that. Everyone's going to get their money's worth.

The thing that hurts the most when I look back on it, is how unorganized the whole damn raid really was. I realize that, had I known then what I know now, I could have stopped the whole thing dead in its tracks, neat, and fast, and slick as piss without even breaking a sweat. But I didn't know what I know now, the reason for that most likely being I was only six years old, cowering in numb horror on the far side of a dune, wetting my pants, while a cavalcade of rusty cars swept into Little Boulder, while the bandits in those cars poured out. While a symphony of shotgun fire drifted over the sand and I flinched with each report. While the one with the flamethrower torched every house systematically.

This is a lesson we all have to learn sooner or later: No phantom, however immense, can possibly be more dangerous then plain old mortal maliciousness.

All night, I stayed up on that dune, long after the bandits had left with whatever valuables they had managed to get their hands on. I can't imagine it was much. We weren't a rich town; we lived off the crumbs shaken loose from the pockets of rich Sandsteamer passengers.

But it's not as though I'm in much of a position to lecture anyone on the value of human life.

It wasn't until the sun was high that I pulled it together enough to investigate the ruins of my town. The fires had gone out, but the rubble still smoldered. My house was a pile of blackened stone and ash, and I turned away from it quick, telling myself firmly that I must have wandered up to the wrong place. And that was what it was for a long time, a town not my own. These bodies, emptied now of blood and starting to attract ugly and curious carrion birds, were the shells people I'd never met before.

You'd think that would keep me from crying, wouldn't you? Well, you'd be wrong about that.

I sat down in the center of town and at last gave in to my hitching breath, the unbearable ache in my throat and burn behind my eyes. I cried until I had no more tears, until I was simply too dehydrated.

Even now, looking back on it, there's a quality of furious surrealism, of desperate detachment. Since that moment when I realized with a jolt like waking that I needed to drink or else I'd die, I've always been too busy staying alive to feel a lack.

Think I'll keep it that way. I'll have plenty time to grieve after I'm dead, I'm sure.

I must have looked like a damn zombie stumbling around those ruins in search of water, trying so hard not to look at anything that when I finally did stop to reorder my sense of direction, I was on open desert again.

And that's where my story begins. You'd think a little girl with no survival training, lost and alone in the desert would work better as the ending to a story, wouldn't you?

Well, this isn't that kind of story.

What kind of story is it, you ask? You're just going to have to wait until I take care of a few things before finding out.


	8. Red Headed Stranger

**Semblance of Eden 8 ~ Red-Headed Stranger**

"My what?"

Wolfwood tosses me his best gold-plated smile. "Your partner? You know, that person you work with on jobs like this because running right in without anyone watching your back is really stupid? Not that other kind of partner you may have been…"

"Oh, is that how the two of you are defining it?"

"Well… maybe not exactly." Midvalley smirks, jabs Wolfwood in the ribs once as though to be certain he has his attention. "Close enough for religious work, though."

"If you say so," Wolfwood mutters

It's been two days, and corpses aren't exactly the kind of things anyone wants to keep around in heat like this. They must have put Victor in the ground by now. He would have been pretty charred by the time they pulled him out of the fire, and I know the second ceremony wasn't nearly as spectacular as the Viking funeral I gave him. Black desert beetles, spiders with bodies that glisten like raw meat are already picking apart his softest spots: eyes and lips, the jagged charcoal edges around the bullet wound in his face…

"I haven't had much luck with partners," I say abruptly.

The corner of Midvalley's mouth scrunches up like a bit of stiff cloth. "That sounds ominous. What d'ya do? Eat 'em?"

"Calm down, Patch." That smile Wolfwood throws around so casually, it's going to get him killed someday. Or maybe just some poor fool who falls for it. All depends on how he uses it. "It's just for this job. It's not like you two are gonna have to shop for curtains and pick out engagement rings."

"Give me a break already."

Midvalley just laughs lazily. "Poor thing." He claps me on the shoulder. "Come meet the lucky victim, why don't you?"

I shrug his hand off, but I know already that any excuse I give him, he won't really be listening to me. Like a bad father, he has a nasty habit of that.

It's the most obnoxiously, painfully familiar thing in the world, sweeping the saloon with my eyes, trying to pinpoint which barstool or lonely corner table Midvalley will lead me to – which rugged, scarred, silent new man he will introduce me to – a moment in advance. A moment is all I'll need to know him, because a life like this one forces people into plaster casts, fades them like old photographs. There are only a few ways to live on this planet, fewer ways to live well, and my 24 years have been enough to see them all more times than I care to.

And already such a thorough silhouette has taken shape in my mind, that when we do stop, Midvalley swinging his arm around in an exaggerated gesture of presentation, it takes me a moment to realize what's happened.

A curl of smoke from Wolfwood's cigarette drifts in front of my face, and through the haze blue eyes meet mine. The boy who springs from his chair to meet us can't be any more than sixteen, maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. Beneath a few spikes of pale bangs his face is more sunburn than tan, turning the dusting of freckles over his nose magenta, like a splatter of cheap makeup.

I get all this before the first blink, because that's what I've been trained to do, and by the time the boy is on his feet, thrusting his hand in my direction and presenting a smile that's impossibly white against his pink skin, I've already turned away.

"This supposed to be a joke, Midvalley?" Because I'm not laughing yet. And, trust me, I'm not about to get it, either.

He snorts softly, and when he speaks again he's all business. "Don't be such a bitch, Dominique. This is Marlowe. Your partner."

I glance back and I think maybe, just maybe, that was all some strange trick of the light and when I look again Midvalley's not going to be referring to this green kid who couldn't look me straight in the eye if he stood on a chair.

But it's the same boy, the same dirty blond hair, the same eerie blue eyes even if they've dimmed a little now, sheepishly. "Hi." His fingers curl nervously in the hem of a blue flannel shirt. "Miss… Cyclops."

In the moment of awkward silence that follows, all the reasons I hate kids stomp abruptly across my conscious in full military formation with a tickertape parade.

"My name's Dominique." But before the kid can apologize – I just know the next thing out of his mouth's going to be an apology, and he's already got enough strikes against him – I glance back to Midvalley. "And, it's funny, because I don't remember signing up for the daycare program."

"Ah, your maternal instincts will kick in sooner or later, Patch." With a soft chuckle, Wolfwood slides easily out from behind us to ruffle Marlowe's hair. "Isn't that right, kiddo?"

"Do you really think so?"

His chuckle becomes a full-blown snort of laughter. "Ha. Not a chance."

"Dominique." Midvalley still sounds serious, and it's not going to be worth it to push him any further when he's like this. Once he's made up his mind, it'd be easier to hunt sharks in the desert than it would be to get him to change it. "I think you'll find him more than qualified."

Damnit, if Midvalley wants me dead, he should just say so. I'm certain there are more humane ways to go about it than this. "That's not the point…"

His eyes narrow, paper-cut thin. It's cute, that he still thinks he can intimidate me. But before he can speak again, the kid darts forward, planting himself between us. It's so ridiculous I can't even laugh, this little snotnosed green rookie with his hands clenched into fists at his side, looking like he's about to hold back a sandstorm all by himself…

"It's okay, Miss Dominique," he says brightly. "I'll stay out of your way. I'm really quiet; I promise."

Wolfwood chokes ungracefully on laughter. "That's right, kiddo. Way to win her over."

It's too late. The tension's gone now, broken like a bone, and already Wolfwood's taking Midvalley's arm, peeling him away. He leans close, whispers something in his ear, and then Midvalley chuckles quietly, too. "It's the Rat Cellar Saloon, that's where we meet in Babylon. See you around, Patch."

And he turns away smoothly, lifting a hand to me over his shoulder. Beside me the kid – Marlowe – sighs. "Wow, Miss Dominique, you were really gonna fight him."

"Who says there was going to be a fight?"

He straightens a little, and his eyes grow even wider. "Not me. Well, I mean… I could just tell… Right?"

"You're strange, kid." I shake my head. I suppose he's right; I would have fought if I had to, but that's just the way things are. If I wanted to change it, I wouldn't even know how, and to hear Marlowe talk like that, he might as well be trying to tell me that he's found a place where naked Legato Bluesummers grow on trees. "Come on. We're leaving. And if I hear any complaining, I'm leaving you for the vultures."

It's time I went back. That's just the way things are, too.


	9. The Far Country

**Semblance of Eden 9 ~ The Far Country**

Three days. That's how long it takes to cross the dunes to Babylon. You can't travel when the suns are high unless you want to cook the engine like a bug under a magnifying glass, and so most of that time - too much of that time - is waiting. I could almost envy Marlowe; he crawls into the backseat of the car, slips on a pair of wraparound sunglasses and sleeps those five hours.

Jesus, I couldn't sleep if I wanted to.

I think, I should be edgy, my nerves should be so fried they're black as burnt toast. But I'm calm. And still, I don't try to sleep. I chain smoke instead, slowly and steadily, and watch the twin suns slide across the sky.

On the third day, we find a little shade beneath an outcropping of rocks and rest there out of the heat like lizards. In the distance, I can make out, just barely, a spike of polished metal like a pillar of light on the horizon.

It's not just a trick of the heat.

It's the Babylon City Plant, largest one still operational, they say. Beneath the town's streets, hundreds of miles of piping and wires, a stainless steel network spreading out and out like a web to thousands of buildings. The foundations were laid decades ago by men and women who never lived to see their city flourish.

And because it did flourish, we applaud their act of faith. A leap from the temple's highest tower, or maybe just a long walk off a short pier.

There's a rustling from the back seat abruptly, and a yawn. "Go back to sleep," I say, flicking my cigarette out the open car door and into the sand. I've been savoring the smooth progression of one smoke to another since we stopped here, like moments until death. "We can't leave for at least another hour."

Marlowe sits up, scratching his nose idly as he stifles another yawn against his palm. "Too hot."

"Never stopped you before."

He takes off his sunglasses - I see all this in reverse in the rearview mirror - wipes them carefully on the frayed hem of his shirt before putting them back on. And he shrugs, limp and lopsidedly, like a marionette. "Besides, I don't feel like it."

"Well, don't expect me to entertain you."

Another lazy shrug, and Marlowe leans forward a little. I've left my pistol sitting on the dashboard, shimmering from the heat, and even with the dark glasses I can tell that's what has got his attention. I pick it up by the barrel, and even through my gloves I can feel how hot it's gotten over the last few hours. "Let me see what you can do, kid."

I offer him the gun, and he jumps a little, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. He's blushing as he pushes them back up. "What? Like, shooting?"

"No, I wanted you to find three more just like it and show my how you juggle."

"Ahh, Miss Dominique..." He takes the gun from me, holding it up before his face like he expects it to grow legs at any moment and make a break for freedom. "I don't know how to use this thing."

"Don't be cute, kid." My patience is running thin as my stash of smokes right about now.

"I'm not cute. I've never even held one of these before."

He's not kidding, I realize suddenly. I can see by the way he curls his fingers around the pistol; carefully, like he expects it to go off all on its own. "So, you're a hired gun without a gun?"

His lips curl a little, into a pout. "Hey, I just haven't gotten around to that part yet, okay? I can do other stuff..."

"Really?" It's not that I don't believe him. Even Midvalley has a few things going for him, and thoroughness is one of them; he wouldn't have recruited this kid based on good intentions. "Like what?"

"Well, I..." The leather upholstery creaks as he leans closer, bracing his elbows on the backs of the seats. "I know things before they happen. I can just tell."

"You mean, you can see the future?"

"Sometimes." I can't blame Marlowe for taking my expression just then the wrong way. "Forget it," he mutters. "I don't expect you to believe me."

I sigh; catching him by the jaw and turning him back to face me before he can escape into the backseat. "Kid, look, I've watched my boss take down a room full of armed men without lifting a finger. Why the hell would I have trouble swallowing your story?"

"Yeah." He squirms a little. "Yeah, I guess."

He's not used to talking about his talents. Fine then, that makes two of us. And I hear myself say, "Show me."

He blinks. "I don't know, Ms. Dominique. It doesn't always work the way I want it to, you know? I can't always tell what I'm going to see."

"Show me," I say again. "And I'll teach you how to use that." I nod to the gun; he's forgotten about it by now, but it's still clenched tightly in his hand.

"Oh?" He glances down at the pistol, turning it slightly so the sun catches on the barrel, splashing the ceiling with light. His lower lip catches thoughtfully between his teeth. "Okay. It's a deal."

When he looks back, his eyes are a little bluer than they were before, or maybe that's just my imagination. He reaches for me with one hand. "I'm not a pervert or anything, Miss Dominique. Really. Sometimes it just helps me focus a little better, okay?"

I nod once, suddenly feeling a little foolish, though I can't quite pinpoint the reason. Maybe it's that I suddenly can't imagine what I was ever hoping to learn from this. Even the manner of my death won't be news to me now.

But his fingertips are already dusting the hair from my temple, and he grins nervously. His eyes meet mine. Yes, definitely bluer now, and his pupils have receded to pinpoints at their centers, almost nonexistent. "Okay, here I go."

He falls silent, and I wait. I can't help but be a little disappointed; I had expected it to feel like something, expected there to be a bit of a show. But he just stares at me in silence, and after a minute his eyes glaze over and he's not watching me anymore, he's watching some spot a thousand miles beyond me.

"Hey, Kid." He doesn't move. Great. This is why I hate working with partners... "Kid, are you awake? Hey! Mar-"

"Legato."

He speaks so suddenly, that I almost jump. I look at him again, just to be sure, but his gaze is still unfocused. He's still as out of it as a kid coming down off Novocain. "What the hell are you talking about?" But I really don't really think he can hear me.

"You're standing on a ridge, sort of a stone shelf cut into the face of a cliff. You know it well; you used to come here a lot, but that was many years ago..." He pauses, the corner of his mouth twisting upward. "You're thinking, you've been running full speed and now you've finally hit a wall. You're thinking.., the only thing you can do is jump, but you're not sure if the fall will be enough to kill you..."

"Kid?" My voice sounds hollow, brittle as a skeleton. It's not until then that I realize I've forgotten to breathe. "What about Legato?"

"He's there too. He's been there longer than even you know. And you don't turn around, because you know he's waiting for you to turn so you can see his eyes when he..."

"Marlowe!" And suddenly I'm wheeling back, out of his reach. My ribs hit the steering wheel and the horn coughs a long, steady note across the desert. Overhead, a vulture croaks out a strangled response, and across from me, Marlowe blinks twice and shakes his head.

"Oh, Miss Dominique. Did I say something wrong?" He smiles, embarrassed and apologetic like he just saw up my skirt or something. "I told you, I can't really control what I'm gonna see all the time?"

The back of my neck, the space between my shoulder blades are cold, damp with sweat? "No. No, I'm fine." Those last few words - whatever he saw at the end there - I just couldn't make myself listen, as though hearing it out would have been the same thing as resigning myself to it. "Ha, that's bullshit anyway, right?"

He looks at me seriously; I think it's the first time I've ever seen him serious. "If you think you can change the future, Miss Dominique..."

And I hesitate. I can feel heat just beneath my left breast, a bruise already beginning to form where I struck the steering wheel. It's a small pain compared to the clawing at the back of my skull whenever I replay Marlowe's words. "Kid, I think there are a lot of choices to be made before the future catches up with us."

He laughs softly, hiding it behind his hand. "Okay, Miss Dominique. That sounds fair to me."

I need a cigarette, something to do with my hands to keep them from shaking. I grip the steering wheel tight, and that seems to help a little. I can't keep still any longer, but it takes a few stabs to get the car key into the ignition.

In the rearview mirror, Marlowe is looking at me over the top of his sunglasses like I've just grown another arm. "When we get into town, Kid," I hear myself say, "Just keep your eyes open."


	10. For a Few Dollars More

**Semblance of Eden 10 ~ For a Few Dollars More**

Passing the Babylon town limits, I suddenly know how Agamemnon felt after the siege of Troy, entering those scorched walls for the first time in ten blood-soaked years: Tired; frustrated and sore and sick to his gut from the heat. Needing a cold beer so badly that he'd pudding wrestle Odysseus for the chance at one.

I pull to the curb and the engine rattles and wheezes to a relieved halt. At some point during that last stretch, the muffler gave out and the thing runs loud as a tank without it. My instinct says the radiator's shot, too, not to mention something in the fuel line that makes the whole cab stink like gasoline.

I'll have to arrange for something else soon. Never know when we'll have to leave town in a hurry.

But never in such a hurry that there's not time for a drink.

"Hey, Marlowe!" The kid's still crawling out of the back seat, picking at his perspiration-stained shirt.

"I smell like gasoline," he mutters, and then turns his eyes to me. "And cheap cigarette smoke."

"Don't look at me. Those cigarettes weren't cheap." I gesture toward the saloon with a tilt of my head. "Come on. I'll buy you a beer."

His face twists into a pout so pathetically comical it belongs on a character in a shitty newspaper cartoon strip. "I smell like sweat, too."

"I know. We both stink." I hold the collar of my shirt to my nose and draw a deep breath to prove this point. "That means people will leave us alone."

He turns up his nose distastefully. "That doesn't sound very nice..."

I'll never understand people who don't appreciate the value of sullen silence. Wolfwood's one of them, come to think of it, but Midvalley isn't. I guess they make up for the awkward moments with sex.

"Suit yourself, kid, but if you don't come you're going to be sitting out here in the car. I'm not getting us a room until I have a drink for luck." I shrug, and my right shoulders grumbles at me. I had almost forgotten about it, written it off as healed. But all that driving couldn't have been the best thing for it. Besides, I'm a fool if I ever thought Legato would allow himself to just be written off.

Whether he likes it or not, if this dusty planet remembers anything of us after we're gone, it's going to be that he once walked upon its face.

"Right, for luck," Marlowe mutters, and I'm not sure if I was supposed to hear it or not, so I don't comment. Just start for the door of the saloon without looking back at him. After a few paces he follows, swiping the sweat from his forehead - just spreading it around is more like it - as he draws up at my elbow.

Inside, I ask what's on tap. Listen closely without really hearing, and then hold up two fingers and parrot the last thing the bartender said. He gives my profile a hard stare, and I turn on the barstool so he can see my other Eye.

Shock floods over his face. Priceless.

And then, more slowly, it is replaced by creeping understanding. Worrisome.

"You're with those other two that came through here, aren't you?" he mutters, slamming our beers down on the counter. His eyes shift to Marlowe, and I can't help but wonder if that 'you' was intended for both of us.

I'm silent for a long time, and I watch him as though I could make his question a rhetorical one by will alone. He's drearily handsome. Brown hair, beginning to streak gray at the temples. Sharp cheekbones, a square jaw. His nose is a little flat at the bridge, as though it's been broken at some point along the way, but that seems a long time ago from where I'm sitting. His eyes are small and hard, gritty, the colorlessness of dust or the sky just before dawn breaks.

By the time Marlowe shifts nervously on his barstool - nearly sliding clean off the green vinyl and on to the floor - we've been staring each other down for a quarter of a minute.

"You mean the priest, right?" The tip of Marlowe's index finger skates around the rim of his beer glass. "And the musician? Yeah, they're friends of ours."

He blushes furiously, taking a deep gulp of his beer as though to dissuade the bartender from questioning us any further.

He turns his attention back to me instead. "I don't..."

"Want any trouble?" I finish for him. "I just stopped by for a beer." I take a drink as if to prove that fact. A long drink, savoring it. "For luck." The alcohol's so bitter that it's almost sweet going down, so cheap and greasy it almost tastes smooth.

Guess today is my lucky day.

"What's your name, _compadre_?" I hear myself ask.

He hesitates. He doesn't trust me. That's fine, even though I can't imagine that I've given him a reason not to. I'm even drinking his hooch in good humor.

"Cassius," he says at last.

Fascinating. "You got a wife, Cassius?"

His eyes harden even more. I hadn't thought that was possible.

"Dead," he reports coolly.

"Any kids? Or are they dead, too?"

I'm not sure quite what I'm doing. Trying to get him to back off, I think. Mind his own damn business. Keep his head down so he can keep it at all. But when he nods, something inside me seems to snap into place, so sharp and sudden it almost hurts.

There's a reason his family is dead. It's not cancer like it says on the death certificates, not dysentery or respiratory failure or heart defect. The real reason is the same reason one of my eyes is blood red, the same reason a part of my brain which had been dormant at my birth is awake now, buzzing with white electrical impulse, synapses firing a million times a second to cloud the senses of men and even... more perfect amalgamations.

The same reason I'm here, in this town, one last time with feeling.

I realize he's still watching me. Marlowe, too, but the look in their eyes isn't the same. I nod, hoping it seems sage enough to throw them both off the scent.

"I understand, then. It doesn't make sense yet, but it will soon enough."

I can't help but think that's a lie, but I've told bigger lies in the past, for better reasons, and to people I care about more. And though I feel that Cassius knows this - the lie, if not the more important parts, too - he backs off. "The beer's gonna be six double dollars," he tells me stiffly. "If you two are staying here, I can run a tab."

We are, but I pay him anyway. He leaves after that, and I know he won't be back until my drink is low. For a while, I have that silence I was hoping for, but it's heavy on our shoulders.

Marlowe cracks under the pressure of it first, and I don't blame him. "Miss Dominique...?"

"Quiet. I told you everything will make sense soon enough."

"How did you know about his kids, Miss Dominique?"

"It happens all the time in this city. Everything will..."

"Make sense soon enough?" The cool voice makes my jaw clench convulsively. A shadow moves into my light.

"Legato!" Beside me, Marlowe almost chokes on nothing more than the stifling atmosphere of his presence. "Sir," he amends weakly.

Everything I said a few minutes ago about the stink of travel clinging to us and how I was glad for it, I take it all back. Because he's sweeping his long coat out, perching elegantly on the barstool at my left elbow.

"You sound so certain of that, Dominique." His eyes, sharp as stilettos, flash hungrily. "I must admit, I wonder at this truth you seem to be searching for."


	11. A Bullet for the General

**Semblance of Eden 11 ~ A Bullet for the General**

I look down at my whiskey and make my mind a wall.

Well, I try, at any rate. It's a nice amalgamation of words, but I don't really know what it means. Maybe Legato does; I'll ask him sometime.

But for now I settle with a cool, objective, "Drink, sir?"

"No, thank you. The taste is a bit harsh for me." There's a thin vein of malevolent laughter beneath the words.

Too bad for him. I gulp down the last of the beer in my glass, feel it hit my gut like a rush of courage. "If you're not here to drink, there's not much else this place has going for it."

"Babylon, you mean?" His eyebrow arches jauntily, and the vinyl barstool grunts beneath his weight as he shifts on it. "You seem to know this city well. I wonder what else you know."

Marlowe's been sitting silent until now, shoulders rigid as though waiting for Death to pass him over. But when Legato speaks, he gives a little hiccup of surprise, swiveling abruptly in his seat so he faces away from us. I can feel myself scowl; no use hiding my embarrassment now, not as long as this kid keeps acting like the relative I'd have to keep locked in the basement whenever company called. That banging noise? Just the wind…

"I've heard my share of rumors," I say evenly. "But I'm sure you're not interested in gossip, Legato."

"Don't be so sure of that." He sounds… almost curious. It must be something tight in his eyes, something drawn taut between us, because there's really nothing different about his voice – not something I can pinpoint, at least – but I know I'm not imagining things. Marlowe must have noticed it too, and he spins back to face us.

"Even idle gossip may have some truth to it, Dominique." When he speaks again, that edge is gone from his words, that treacherous undertow of emotion, and his gaze is the same as it's always been. But it doesn't make it any easier for me to breathe.

"I suppose it could."

He watches me expectantly, and I realize, I have something he wants. Even if it's just for an instant, until he loses interest in me again and wanders off to kick a puppy. If I looked out the window right and Four Horsemen were preparing to make their grand entrance, it wouldn't be as grand and glorious a revelation as the one I'm having right now.

I lean a little closer. "It's an ugly story. Are you sure it's not too harsh for you?"

"Don't push your luck, Dominique."

As though I haven't pushed it hard enough already. Just sitting at this bar, drinking this beer, preparing to say what I'm about to say because I'm not a smart enough woman or a brave enough woman or a loyal enough woman not to. And don't I know, in the end, the game always goes to the House.

So I throw my chips on the table and, lowering my voice a little, I ask him, "Have you ever heard of the Human Modification Project?"

He raises an eyebrow slightly. Looks almost intrigued, but I know better than that. I really do. "The use of Plant energy in gene therapy to cure birth defects." He recites it cleanly, casually… you'd never know he was talking about an experiment half a century old. "A monumental failure, wasn't it?"

"Something like that." I nod slowly. "The therapy worked better than anyone had hoped, but there were side effects. Nasty poisoning from direct exposure to Plant radiation that most of the subjects didn't survive. After a few years they pulled the plug on the procedure."

"I never pictured you as having a mind for current events." Legato drums his fingers once, sharply, on the edge of the bar.

"Only when they concern me."

He leans forward slightly, and I catch myself before I pull back, bite my lip before I can gasp. "That project was discontinued decades ago."

"And that was just the official story." At those words, he recoils a little, and I can tell by his eyes that even he doesn't really know why. Something he can feel, maybe. A static tightness in the air. "No one cared about medicine. The whole project was just a front for something crueler."

As though to make up for a moment ago, he says coolly, "Well, I like it already."

There are a thousand things I could answer to that, but in the end, for what feels like the first time in years, I settle for the truth. "They wanted better weapons. It's all anyone on this planet wants. But instead of creating more efficient guns, they tried to create more efficient people to use the guns they already had. Did you know the Babylon Plant sponsors a free clinic for children of poor families?"

"How philanthropic," Legato says disinterestedly. But he is interested. I know him better than that. If he didn't care, he'd already be gone.

I feel a bitter smile come to my lips. "They had all the doctors in their pocket. They pumped those kids so full of condensed Plant energy they must have glowed in the dark. Ask anyone that lives around here; they've all lost family under mysterious circumstances."

Marlowe gasps softly, and his eyes light so abruptly with realization that I can almost hear a crackle of electricity. Is it possible he's brighter than I thought? "You mean like that—"

He bites off the rest of the words as Legato's eyes fall on him, but I assure him all the same. "Yeah, just like him. But there were a few that survived the treatments, and it changed them somehow. They developed heightened senses, a higher tolerance for pain. Any number of things depending on how they took to the treatments."

Legato takes a moment to fold his hands before him, peaking his fingertips as though he's about to pray. "I don't suppose you have any evidence of this, Dominique?"

I'd thought for a second there that he'd forgotten how to be an aloof and unavailable bastard. But there's that familiar haughtiness in his voice now, and for some reason that comforts me, warms me to the core like a hot bath.

And I lift one hand, raking my hair casually from my face to reveal the Demon's Eye. I tap my finger against the metal plate over it, and if clangs hollowly, the loudest sound I've ever heard. "What do you call this?"

He reaches for me, and for a moment I'm afraid I've said too much. For a moment, I think his fingers are going to close around my throat because suddenly he's forgotten that he can split my heart wide open in my chest and only bare hands will be enough after what I've done. For a moment, I'm too scared to be afraid of him, and I lean forward slightly. Just in time to feel two fingertips glide over the leather strap stretched beneath my temple.

"I see," is all he says, and he pulls away once more. "You needn't be concerned, Dominique. I believe you." He pushes abruptly to his feet, straightening the lapels of his coat. He turns deliberately away. Turns away, and then back, fixing me with that tarnished yellow stare. "By the way, have I told you yet who it is we're here to kill?"

"No, Sir, you haven't."

"What a grievous oversight on my part." A knife blade smile curves his lips. "Marcus Rien? Perhaps you're familiar with the name…?"

I can taste my pulse in the back of my throat. There was a part of me that had known it all along, but I kept it quiet. Clenched my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut against it, gulped it down like one of the foul, slimy things you eat to stay alive out amongst the dunes. But it's here now. The goddamn inescapable truth staring me in the face again, like an old friend that never left. "You mean…"

"The manager of the Babylon City Plant." He searches my expression for a moment, but I'm not giving him any more than I already have. I know I don't look panicked yet, and so I hold my breath. He laughs quietly, and starts for the stairs that lead up to the rooms we have rented. "I'm sure you'll think of a suitable revenge, Dominique. I do have that much faith in you."


	12. The Searchers

**Semblance of Eden 12 ~ The Searchers**

"Oh wow! Oh wow!" Marlowe squirms in his seat, making the vinyl squeak so loud that even the bartender looks over. I swear, this is the last time I take him anywhere. He's spending the rest of the week handcuffed to the radiator with a pair of dirty underwear stuffed in his mouth.

"Cool it, Marlowe. Please?"

"This is the big time, isn't it Miss Dominique? This is like a real big job, huh?"

He goggles at me. It would actually be rather endearing, if it wasn't stomping all over my newest, fondest, most precious memories of Legato, which, if I had my way, I'd spend the next week or two playing over and over again my mind and never grow tired.

"Sure. Put it on your resume."

"Oh, Miss Dominique. Don't be silly. I don't know how to _write_."

"Of course."

"Do you? You must be, like, super smart. They should call you Dominique the Smart. Or Dominique the Giant Brain!"

I sigh. "First thing, a lady never talks about her book learning. Second thing, I'm not that smart at all. I just had a chance to spend a few years in school."

"School?!"

He blurts the word out so loudly that any of these roughnecks who weren't staring at us – perhaps on account of being both blind and deaf - are sure as shit looking at us now. Looking like they want to drag us behind their pickup truck, that is.

"In my hometown, there were only four kids who went to school," Marlowe says. "They said it was so they could have a better life, but they already had the best life ever. Their parents were rich and doctors and engineers and things like that. That's why they could send their kids to school in the first place!"

"I know. I guess you're going to tell me it's not fair, right?"

"Miss Dominique," he says. His voice is quiet, serious for the first time. When I look over at him, he's staring down into his glass. "Come on, now. Life's not fair, right?"

"You got that right."

A smile breaks across his face, and I'm not sure whether it's more like dawn over the mountains or a crevasse in the earth. He's beaming at me with the same look he's going to give the first girl who agrees to fuck him. And I can't say I like it very much, but at the same time, I feel a little flattered. It's almost like being loved; like the kind of look men would give you all the time if your tits were T-bone steaks and your cunt dripped fine brandy, or even just a decent whiskey rye.

"I don't really like this beer, Miss Dominique," he says. "It tastes pretty icky. You have it." He pushes it told me, lip prints around the rim and all. "I'm going to go take a shower now. I need to be careful, or else the badguys are going to be able to smell me coming."

"Sure, Kid," I tell him. "I'll be here if you need me."

I finish his beer, and I have another for good measure. But not enough to get me drunk. I'm the type who can hold her liquor, but I feel like I'm going to need every sense I've got and need them sharp. For what, though? That's the only thing I don't know yet.

I head upstairs after Marlowe.

It's too damn quiet by half, but when I look into our room, the kid's sprawled out on the bed with a pillow over his face. There's a moment right there at the beginning when I can feel panic start to squeeze my throat. But the first thing I notice is that Marlowe's chest is still rising and falling in the steady rhythm of sleep.

The second thing I notice is that he's taken the only bed.

I suppose it's what I deserve for rolling into town last, but you can bet your ass that Midvalley and the Preacher have a room with two beds, and maybe even a little kitchen with a hotplate. And Legato, he always gets the best room in the house. Period.

The hall's empty when I go back out. I have no idea what Legato's doing behind his closed door. I know exactly what Wolfwood and Midvalley are up to behind theirs though. They're like a couple of prairie dogs, or none-too-bright teenagers. I can't stand them walking around acting like they invented fucking and they're going to be millionaires just as soon as they can pull themselves away long enough to get to the patent office.

Looks like no one around here has any need for a little woman's intuition.

I leave. Through the bar and out onto the street. The sun's going down, and the sky's red as fire. The spire of the City Plant is red too; the sun is reflected in the flat, unshining metal like a bloody eye. And I try to remember which floor Marcus kept his offices on. It was near the top, like a mote, a spec of dust in the pit of that giant, staring eye.

"I'm coming for you."

I say it aloud, just to try it out. It doesn't sound bad, but it's not the revelation I was hoping for.

"I'm coming to you," I try instead, but it's not really an improvement. "I'm coming back."

If my luck holds out, maybe I won't have to do anything. Marcus' assassins must know Legato's here by now. Maybe he'll make the first move. Maybe Legato will. Maybe that trick where you ride the plummeting elevator all the way to the bottom, and then jump right before it hits the ground isn't a myth after all.

The problem is that it's too soon. It's been three years since I last saw Marcus. He's not even thirty yet. Not nearly long enough for his looks to start to go south. He's still that golden Greek god he was when I left him behind.

I don't remember anymore if it was Marcus I loved, or just the way he looked, the way he made me feel. It hardly matters though, does it? Either way, when I think of killing him I feel like a knight on Crusade smashing my way through priceless Eastern treasures.

I'll see him again before all this is over. But not tonight. No, tonight I'm going back into the Saloon and joining the first game of poker I see. I'm not going to cheat, unless I have to. I'm going to drink more then I should, and when I get upstairs, I'm not going to wake Marlowe at all. I'm going to make a pillow of my coat and sleep on the floor.

That kid would never be able to get any rest that way.


	13. Seven Men from Now

**Semblance of Eden 13 ~ Seven Men from Now**

I take those roughnecks in the saloon for all they're worth. If I'd known before how easy the Demon Eye makes it to cheat at cards, then I wouldn't have needed to kill for my daily bread. I could have a neat little fortune tucked away by now. Once in a while, if things got dull, I could hustle a game of pool.

Would I be happy that way?

I don't know what time it is when I stumble up the stairs. Past midnight, I think. It's all quiet upstairs, but I can't keep my feet from making noise. My toes catch with each step; I hold the railing tight. I'm helpless like this. Were those old and creaking floorboards to become footsteps from one moment to the next, were one of the shadows at the head of the stairs to hold an assassin, I wouldn't even know it until he was right on top of me.

I laugh, just to myself.

In our room, Marlowe is still sleeping like the dead. The kid sleeps more than anyone I've ever known. And, from the sound of things, he snores like a Sandsteamer engine too.

Still, though, he is just a kid. And if I could do what he does, I'd spend all the time hoping for good dreams, too. So I leave him in the bed, and go back out. I stand in the hallway for a full minute before it finally sinks in that I don't really have anywhere else to go. Midvalley and Wolfwood have probably humped each other into grinning comas by this hour. The only light is the one creeping out from under Legato's door.

And what a sweet light it is. Warm and golden. It's not me that walks towards that light; it's a possessed woman. It's not my hand that lifts to knock three times sharply; it's the hand of someone under deep hypnosis.

He answers promptly. Hell, maybe he knew I was coming.

"Yes, Dominique?"

He's unbelievable gorgeous like this, in just his jeans and tee shirt. Barefoot, with his hair a little ruffled. His coat's draped over the chair back in the room, and his boots are on the floor beside it. One standing up, the other toppled on its side.

"The kid… Marlowe's asleep. There's only one bed."

"Share with him," he says.

"He's snoring."

"So wake him."

"I tried," I tell him. It's just a little white lie. Completely harmless.

"What can I do for you, then?"

"Come on, Legato. Cut the crap. You've got two beds, just let me sleep over."

You can't argue with logic like that. But if you could, Legato would be the type to try. He's never struck me as one to value his privacy, but I've also never seen him look for company. Especially not at night. Even when there are two beds.

He stares at me for a while; I don't know how long. Time has this funny way of losing some of its meaning when he's around. He steps aside, enough to let me in.

"You're intoxicated, Dominique."

I shrug. "Just a little."

"I should say, more than that."

There's something strange in his voice. I don't bother turning around, because I know, whatever's hiding there, his expression won't give me any clues. But I almost think, I could almost swear, he's trying to joke with me.

If he is, it's a first for him.

"What would you know about it? You never drink."

I take off my hat before I turn around. I purse my lips, and when I look at him, I look up through my lashes. Really lay it on thick, you know? I know I'm not some timeless beauty, but I'm not so bad to look at. Besides, when you've been thirsty as long as Legato has, even bitter water looks like heaven.

"No," he says. "The taste doesn't agree with me."

He shuts the door and comes back inside without looking at me. Okay, maybe forget the thing I said about bitter water. It was a dumb idea, coming here like this…

"Oh? And why is that?" he says. And his voice is so sudden, it makes me wince. I have to make myself think back over the last few seconds, just to be sure I didn't say anything aloud.

"Forgive me," he says. "You're drunk. I can hear your thoughts quite clearly. It was not my intention to intrude."

"Oh." The hackles on the back of my neck are standing up, and I make a show of straightening my hair in the mirror. Partly so I can smooth them down again. Partly so I don't have to look at him. "Was I thinking something in particular?"

"Only that you wished to leave. Is that true?"

"No," I say. "I mean, the bed's right here. Where else am I going to sleep tonight?"

I rake my fingers through my hair hard, and then curse when they catch on a snarl partway down. The nomadic life doesn't lend itself well to having nice things, and my hair is the only luxury I allow myself. But that doesn't mean that sometimes I don't want to take a pair of scissors and make it plead for its life. "I don't know why you'd want to know what's rattling around my head anyway. It's not exactly deep."

"It needn't be deep to be interesting."

"Damnit, Legato. If you've got something to say to me, then say it. But I'm not going to live in fear of my mind wandering."

He's quiet for a minute. So quiet that I glance at his reflection in the mirror. The glass is bad, though, and I can't make out much, just a palette of familiar colors. It's a strangely heavy silence. My god, I think, I hurt his feelings. But I don't think it too hard. No, I don't dare.

"I told you before," he says quietly. "Your secrets are yours to keep. They don't interest me."

"And Knives?"

"It's late, Dominique…"

"What about Knives?"

"He knows all he cares to, for the moment. I'm quite tired. I'm going to turn out the light now."

I won't get anymore out of him tonight. He's gone to brush his teeth, which is about as definite an end to a conversation as you can get. And damn, if it hasn't taken me this long to realize I left my own toothbrush back in my room. But it's too late to go back now, and I suppose he's not the type to have a spare.

I get undressed while he's turned away. As far as I know, he doesn't look over, not even once. I slither out of my jeans, and unhook my corset under my shirt. In just panties and a shirt, I sit down on the edge of the bed. I guess I must look pretty desperate to him.

I guess, maybe I am.

He spits out a mouthful of toothpaste suds, and glances at me. "Are you ready?"

"No. Not quite."

Slowly, deliberately, I unbuckle the straps that hold the patch over my eye, and I take myself out of the picture. I can imagine what he must see. One minute I'm there, the next I'm not. And then a worn western-style shirt appears out of thin air, and crumples, abandoned, to the floor.

I slide under the blankets and pull them all the way up to my chin before I cover my Eye again. "Okay. You can turn out the lights.

But he doesn't right away. He just kind of watches me for a second, watches me so hard that my first thought is to pull my hand away again. Before I get the opportunity, he cups his palm around the kerosene lamp and blows it out. And then, it's too dark to see much of anything anyway.

Hell, that look he gave me didn't mean much. He was probably just trying to figure out the trick.


	14. Garden of Evil

**Semblance of Eden 14 ~ Garden of Evil**

When I wake up the next morning, the other bed is empty. Legato's gone, and I'm nursing a hangover. It doesn't feel so bad, though. No, not as hangovers go. And besides, whenever I feel a stab of pain or a wave of nausea coming on, I just close my eyes for a second and I can see him, and I feel better.

It's a hell of a trick. I don't even have to concentrate at all; I don't have to do anything conscious. He's just there.

I can see the way he looked without his coat, almost like a normal guy. Maybe not the type who'd take you two-stepping on a Saturday night, but still normal. Kind of artsy, maybe, the way he padded around barefoot. Like a sculptor or a theater actor, or something. I can see the way his fingers curled around the lamp before he blew it out, so careful the curve of his ungloved hand, so delicate the ascension from wrist to thumb. His neat nails; his soft skin, without any of the calluses of a man who works for a living.

He kept the other hand hidden from me, but maybe it's just as well. One was almost too much to bear.

Listen. I'll tell you something while I get cleaned up. If you want to hear. If you don't mind waiting, that is. It shouldn't take long.

Picture this: A world where I pull beers at a saloon for a living. Legato's still in the picture. Maybe he owns the place, I don't know exactly. This isn't a precise metaphor. Maybe he owns the place; maybe he just plays a little honky-tonk in the evenings. All I know, is that I'd still love him, and I still wouldn't have the words or the ways to tell him.

I'm not the kind of girl who can't help but fall for men who are bad for her. No, that part is only coincidence. The kind of girl I am, is one who doesn't fall so often – maybe twice in a lifetime – but when I fall, you better believe I hit the ground hard. And it doesn't matter how many bones I break, how many bruises or concussions, once I'm down, I stay there. For months, for years. Maybe longer.

Today, I'm going to pay a visit to Marcus Rien. The part of me that wants to see him has been shouted down almost entirely by the part that knows what a bad idea it is. That part never understood a goddamn thing, though.

Tucked into one of the inside pockets of my coat is a little box full of loose pink powder. It's been used before, a few times, none of them recently, but it's easy to get the hang of. I dust a little over my cheeks and nose to hide the sunburn. I close the lid – tight, to keep the water out – and open another compartment in the side. I rub a little cactus sap over my lips to stain them red. Marcus never really cared about things like this. At least, he said he didn't. But I'm not eighteen anymore, and so maybe I'm doing this more for myself then for him. I was never a churchgoer, but that doesn't mean that rituals don't comfort me. I'm only human, after all.

I put on a fresh shirt. I only wore it once on the trip here, and it doesn't smell too bad yet. I leave through the saloon downstairs, and I walk right past Midvalley and Wolfwood. They're practically feeding each other bites of scrambled egg and grits, and they don't see me leave. I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. I didn't even have to open the Eye. No, not even once.

In the morning sun, the spire of the city Plant gleams like a cauterizing iron. Maybe I should try this some other time, when my brain isn't trying to escape out the back of my skull and I can't feel the last three meals I ate bickering in my stomach.

But I know it has to be now. Today, this morning, this hour. Now, or, one way or another, I'll lose the chance forever.

A pretty blond in a brown corduroy suit is tending the front desk when I walk in. The walls of the lobby are decorated in executive blues and grays. There are a couple of tasteful landscapes on the walls, and a bronze of a cowboy and a dog in the center of the room. Marcus' father had this room added on to the existing structure, and there's nothing here that suggests the magic and machinery that lies beyond the walls.

The blond smiles at me thinly.

"Howdy, Ma'am," I say, and tip my hat.

Her eyes stray, pick out a spot on her desk, hidden by a filing cabinet. If she were going to hide a gun, that would be the place for it, and I reach for my own pistol. My fingers graze briefly over the butt of it. I don't think this girl has it in her to pull the trigger. She looks the type who buys humane mousetraps.

"You must be Dominique," she says, looking back to me. "Mr. Rien said to send you right up. I'll show you to the elevator."

I could have guessed she meant the service elevator.

"Twelfth floor," the blond tells me, and the elevator doors slide shut between us. Marcus knew I was coming. Which means he must know we're in town. And if he knows that, then he can probably guess why we've come. Maybe he's already moving against us. Maybe he'll force Legato's hand.

Maybe things will just work themselves out. Maybe, in the end, I won't have to do anything at all.

You might think it would bother me, that I'd want to take charge of my destiny. But if I've learned one thing, it's that that's no way to prove that you're strong.

The elevator doors slide open again. I'm inside the Plant proper now, and though Marcus' office is decorated in the same subdued shades as the lobby downstairs, it's unmistakably a different world. His door is straight ahead. His name's on the glass in gold letters.

I let myself in without knocking.


	15. Pale Rider

**Semblance of Eden 15 ~ Pale Rider**

Marcus is like anyone else who has to work for a living: he values any distraction he can get.

When I come in, he's leaning over a notebook, tallying up some numbers or writing a memo or whatever it is he does in here all day. I don't know. I never got a chance to see much of this side of the business. Whatever it is, he doesn't look up right away; he stays bent over long enough to finish his thought. I appreciate the gesture. It gives me time to look him over. Though I do wonder if looking at him is the best strategy I can employ at the moment.

He still wears his hair long. It falls to his shoulders in golden curls. I can see a little of his face, but not his eyes. Thank god I can't see his eyes. Because what I can see of his proud jaw, his smooth forehead, his neat Roman nose, is enough to make my heart creep up into my throat.

He looks like Apollo. Not that anyone knows what Apollo looked like, but everyone says it about him, and they've said it for so long now that it's can't be anything but the truth.

A little sigh slips past his lips, then another. He's speaking the words aloud as he writes them. I guess if anyone else did it, he might look kind of dumb. But Marcus doesn't look dumb. No, it just makes him look better. It's a little bit of character, a little spark of life, breathed into a marble statue.

When he's finished, he glances up, and slowly he breaks into a smile. "Dominique? Why, what a pleasant surprise! Come in. You'll have to forgive the mess."

He pushes the papers on his desk deliberately into a stack off to the side. He's killing me here.

"It's been a while," I say. It's pretty simple. It's like a test, to see if my voice is as weak as my knees are right now. I think I sound good, all things considered.

"Not that long," Marcus said. He shows me his teeth, those straight white amazing perfect teeth. "It seems you're still very much in love with me."

I'd head for the door if I could, but I really don't think it's an option at the moment. He sees me hesitate, though, and he just laughs. "Don't be shy. We're both adults here. We can discuss things like adults, can't we?"

"Whatever you say." I take a seat on his sofa, and I sink in about a foot. "But, you know, that ego of yours was always a problem. Looks like it's gotten out of control since I left, though."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"Then humor me. Say it. If it's true, you shouldn't have any trouble saying it."

It's the eyes that get you. In the end, it's always the eyes. Those big blue eyes, so pale they're almost white. I've been trapped in them before, like a prison of ice, and now I know better than to step back into the cell; it would be so easy for him to slam the door.

But I can't look away. I fix my gaze on his, and I say, "I don't love you, Marcus. I never did."

"May I remind you, once you said otherwise. Were you lying?"

"No. I was just wrong. It wasn't you I loved. It was just the way you looked."

"The way I looked?" He steeples his fingers and gives me a critical look. "I don't look much different, if I do say so myself. I have hobbies, you see. They keep me young. Is it safe, then, to say that you still love the way I look?"

"My tastes have changed."

He purses his lips. It's just so goddamn pretty when he does that. "You, on the other hand, have changed, Dominique. I can see it in your eyes. And around them, too, for that matter. You've got wrinkles. Crowsfeet. Your body is so lean and tough. Have you been living hard? Or is it just bad genes?"

"I wouldn't know," I say.

"When you push your lips together like that, it completely spoils the lines of your face…"

"And there's nothing wrong with my body."

"Then perhaps my tastes have changed, too. You see, I remember when you were such a sweet girl, too shy to undress unless the lights were out, so timid you muffled your cries against my shoulder… I had to turn you over, onto your hands and knees, just so you couldn't hide from me." He laughs. "Do you remember that?"

"No."

"A sweet girl, indeed. The sweetest girl I ever knew. Who just so happened to shoot people for a living."

"I still do. I shoot people all the time. Sometimes I just do it for fun."

"Ah, so you have hobbies, too. That's good. We're learning so much about each other! I do hope you aren't the type who mixes business with pleasure, though. I think that's very unprofessional. That friend of yours used to do that. Do you remember? He'd always kill with a knife. He liked to hear women scream… You remember him, don't you? Victor."

Before I realize he's going to do it, his eyes have sharpened into daggers and pierced right through me. My voice sounds like a croak. "I think I do. A little."

"You should. It hasn't been that long since you put a bullet in his head, sugar."

"Victor was on my side, Marcus. Our side. In case you forgot. He was a sadist, a cattle rustler, and a crooked poker player in his free time, though. If you're looking for who killed him, you can start with every roughneck or loose woman on the planet."

It was too much. A denial like that wouldn't fool a senile grandmother.

Marcus smiles indulgently though. "Yes. Truly an evil man. The world is better off not having him in it."

"Well, he wasn't all bad..."

"So they said at the funeral," Marcus says. But I know he wouldn't be caught dead within a hundred miles of a scene like that. "But people always look for the good in you after you're dead."

"Do you think so?"

"I do. And so, when you think about it, I'm actually going to be doing your boss a favor."

"Pardon me?"

"Mr. Bluesummers, isn't it? But that's a mouthful. I bet he just goes by Legato to his friends. Does he have a lot of friends?"

"Just one, I think."

"That makes sense. I can't imagine he has very good people skills. From what I've read about him, I mean. And I have read some. Interesting, but little too pulp for my tastes. That apocalypse stuff is just so genre, don't you think?"

"Are you going to send your men after him?"

"I don't think he's left me with much of a choice."

"Damnit, Marcus, I've been undercover for the last three fucking years. Do not blow this for me. Besides, he'll send them back to you in pieces."

"I'm sure you've been under very deep cover indeed."

"Professor Darius and I arranged it all before he died—"

"And now I've arranged a little something of my own. I can't have a gang of hooligans thinking they can just ride into town with pistols blazing and undo all of my hard work, can I? That would be a poor precedent to set."

"You mean your father's work."

"I mean my work!" he snaps. I've never seen him angry before, but it's so profound now I feel like he could turn me to dust. He gets up slowly, and comes around the desk. I can't rise to meet him, I can only crane my head back, further and further, as he comes close.

"You don't know what he's capable of," I say. He's towering over me now. I try to get up, too late. He bends down, planting a hand on the back of the sofa next to my head. "You don't know what I'm capable of either, Marcus."

He smiles a winning smile. "I know you're just trying to make me jealous, sugar. I think it's sweet of you. You're probably soaking your panties at the thought of us two poor fellas fighting over you. I'll play along if it'll make you smile, but let's not take it too far, all right?"

I can feel his hand on my ribs, that broad, smooth palm. I can smell his cologne. His hand slips under my coat, and I'm shaking. I'm actually fucking shaking, and I know he can feel it and I hate myself a little. Because there's even a part of me that wants him to feel it, that wants him to know he can do this to me. And that he can do so much more, if he'd make a move.

And then, he does.

His hand curls around the hilt of my gun. In a flash, he has it out of the holster, and he tosses it carelessly aside. I'm surprised enough that for a second I can't move, but when I can my first thought is to snap open the patch over my Eye. But Marcus is miles ahead of me. His hand is already clamped over that side of my face, and he's pushing me back against the sofa, tilting my head so he can only see my good side…

"It looks ridiculous," he says. "That patch. That hardware. That thing underneath. But I forgive you."

I'm breathing in big, choked gasps. And every time I suck in, I smell his rich, musky hand cream. It won't go away. His eyes slide down the curve of my throat, and for a moment they don't just look like ice, they feel like it too. Two cubes, dragged over my naked skin.

He kisses me there, just above the collar of my duster. "I forgive you," he says again. "If you're grateful, you can show me."

And I do.


	16. High Noon

**Semblance of Eden 16 ~ High Noon**

I don't want to go back to the hotel right away. Not as sore as I am when I stumble out of the elevator on the ground floor of the city Plant. The blond in the corduroy suit has gotten over some of her earlier unease now that she's sure she's not going to have to spend the rest of the afternoon scrubbing her boss' brains out of the carpet. She calls after me to have a good day.

It's a little late for that, though.

I walk back slowly, because I know I must have somewhere else I can go. I'll take any excuse, even a bad one, to not have to walk into that saloon and face Midvalley and Wolfwood – hell, even Marlowe – right now. But it's Legato, especially, that I'm dreading. He says he doesn't look into my mind, but I don't believe that he never gets curious. Never gets bored.

I walk down Main Street, up and back twice. Most of the buildings are the same, but most of the names have changed. The old livery is a hardware store now. The café where I used to get coffee and preserves is a dress shop with nothing in the windows I'd be caught dead in. And at last I'm forced to admit that I'm a stranger here. This town doesn't want me anymore. The only place I can go is back to the saloon; the only people who can help me are there.

I turn at the end of the street, where the sidewalk steps down into desert, and I head back. Just because I think I might need it later on, I check the street for hiding places. Alleys from which you could step out and take a shot, rooftops with good vantage points. But every time I get a decent dialogue going with myself, a new voice breaks in, loud and clear as a bell:

Marcus, oh Marcus. Did you have to drag us all down with you?

But that's not quite right, is it? Because it's not as though he's doing this alone. It's not like he forced me or anything, right? He's not that kind of guy. He's a gentleman, get it? But I'm not a lady, and I can't tell him no. Not when he's standing there, looking at me, knowing what I want. Daring me not to…

Back at the saloon, I run into Midvalley. I guess this makes two of us with nowhere much to go.

"Where have you been, Patch?"

"Taking a walk."

"Since last night? Marlowe says you didn't come back to the room."

"So I didn't. What are you trying to say?"

"Nothing much, I guess." He shrugs. "But you should know that kid was asking me where you were. He was pretty worried, I guess."

I have to laugh at that. Leave it to Midvalley to cheer me up. "He was worried about me? That's got to be a first, don't you think?"

He doesn't smile back. "So, where were you?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Was it the same place you went this morning?"

Funny, he's not laughing with me. I have to admit, that stings a little. I thought that he, at least, understood that I still had my own affairs. That I need my privacy. That he has no business asking questions like these. He's been in this line of work long enough that he knows the etiquette. But more than that, he knows me. I'm just asking for a little friendly support here.

"Just what are you getting at?" I say.

He waves for me to sit with him, and when I do he lowers his voice. "Listen, Patch, I've got a job to do. Just like you. But my job isn't quite the same as yours. I have additional responsibilities. And I know… I know you like the boss a lot, and I know that maybe he likes you to. Maybe he likes you as much as he can like someone, and, you know, that's really something. You ought to be proud. But you can't keep pushing your luck. Because if you give him any reason to think he can't trust you, then you know what he'll do."

"I know," I say.

"And you know he won't do it himself, right? He'll make me do it. And I really don't want to. Not to you. I really, really don't want to…"

"Come on, Midvalley."

He's got this stupid soft look on his face. His eyes are wide, and his mouth is drawn down in the corners, like everything's melting towards his chin. "You're my best friend, _Senorita_. You don't do things like that to your friends."

"I know," I say. "But you can't talk like that. If you keep it up, he really is going to get suspicious."

"Does he have a reason to be?"

"You want the truth?"

"Yeah." He nods. "The truth. As friends."

I have to think for a minute. The truth is easier said then done sometimes. "I don't know," I tell him at last.

"I see," he says. "That's all right. I'm not dumb, you know. I'm not some heartless asshole. I can see why you might change your mind about this. Sometimes…"

He takes a drink of beer. I suppose it is after noon by now, but it's still a little early for drinking. I have to wonder how long he's been at it, too. His voice is trembling a little. "Sometimes, I think I don't want to die."

"Then you're doing better than a lot of people."

"But the problem is, once I start thinking that I don't want to die, then I start thinking that I don't want Nick to either. Or you. Or hell, even Marlowe. Even the boss. And all the bartenders who mix a sidecar just how I like them, and all the cute redheads who forget underwear some mornings, and all the old men who still play the blues after 70 years."

"Did you say anything about this to Wolfwood?" I ask.

He shakes his head.

"I just thought, a priest might be able to come up with something a little better than I could."

"Try your best," he says with a weak smile.

And I know that if I tried hard enough, I could convince him to walk away from this with me. Marcus would probably take him in. He always did like to think of himself as a patron of the arts. But maybe we wouldn't even need Marcus. Just he and I and the desert, too insignificant in the big picture to even have a destiny to seize.

That's what I want. Only, it isn't. And before I have time to decide, he sighs, and goes on.

"You know, back in the Old Times, people used to die all the time for the things they believed in. It was an honor. And sometimes they'd succeed and they'd be called heroes or martyrs, and sometimes they'd fail and they'd be called terrorists or insurrectionists. Maybe the problem with this planet is that it's too young still to have had a proper revolution. Maybe that's the part we play."

"The heroes?" I say. "Or the terrorists?"

"Both. Neither." He shrugs. "And after we're dead, it won't matter to us either way. But I do hope that when they tell the story, they make me a little bit taller."

"I hope they make me a size six," I say. And Midvalley laughs, which is good.

He turns those big dark eyes up to mine, and I'm surprised to find them a little damp around the edges. I almost ask him if he's okay, but, in the end, I don't.

"Marlowe's probably worried sick," he says.

"He's a pain in the ass. No more partners after this one."

"Not promising anything."

"No more. Or next time, I'm stealing Nick from you."

He laughs, and I know he's grateful for that. But I also know he wants to be alone now, and so I don't say anymore. I just touch his shoulder once, briefly, as I go.


	17. El Mariachi

**Semblance of Eden 17 ~ El Mariachi**

There's nothing I can do now that wouldn't be too little, too late. I waited too long to see how things were going to shake out, and now I'm trapped in a holding pattern. I don't really regret that, I suppose. After all, I visited Legato last night and Marcus this morning, and I'm starting to remember how overrated impulse is.

I'm a nervous wreck. I probably couldn't do anything if I wanted to.

And so, forget the grand gestures of sacrifice or devotion or courage. I'll settle for a hot bath to soak the aches out. Marcus wasn't exactly gentle with me, and the desk he bent me over wasn't exactly soft. After I chase Marlowe out of our room – and remind him what the punishment for peeping is – I undress and look over the damage.

A long lateral bruise slashes across my hips where the edge of his desk dug in, and my arms are bruised in the shape of fingers. My hair is tangled and wild where he wrapped it around his fist and jerked me forward.

There's an ugly dark moon on the inside of my left thigh. You can't exactly make out the teeth marks, but you might as well be able to.

I run the bath water. Run it hot, so that when I step into the tub it doesn't feel nice. It's like a slap of retribution. Eventually, the water turns cold but the aches still linger. When I'm out, before I even bother getting dressed again, I take a dose of laudanum from the bottle I keep for times like this.

After I've drunk it down, I hold the brown glass up to the light, and I feel my forehead crease. I'm getting low. I'll have to take the money I get from this job to the druggist for a refill. I'll have to find it in the budget.

And, as I get dressed again, I start hammering out some figures. My boots need to be resoled, but I suppose they can wait a little longer, provided my wandering days really are behind me for the moment. I have my savings, too. But that I swore I would never touch except in the event of an emergency. Though eventually this good mood I seem to have caught Legato in is going to wear off, and once he's back to communication by way of broken bones and switchblades turned against the hands that holds them, and then a mouthful of that bitter yellow-brown stuff is going to be more necessity than luxury.

Sometimes you get a tincture that's a real tawny yellow, almost gold in color. Almost the same as his eyes. And, in the right dosage, almost as bad for your health.

Downstairs, it's quieter than you might expect for this time of the evening. This is about the hour the Plant engineers call off work, and when the day laborers roll back into town with their pay. A lot of them come here, in their dirty jeans and cowboy boots or their faded coveralls. It doesn't matter which. Outside the big window in the front of the saloon, the second sun is real low in the sky, and the shadows are so long that they seem to distort not just space, but time as well. If you stood with your back to the fading light, you'd be able to see yourself go on for miles if the land were flat enough, which around here it probably is.

But the main room seems empty. The pool tables are unoccupied and unracked; there are only a couple people at the bar. Then I come a little further down the stairs and I can see that it's not empty at all, just lopsided. There's a knot of people crowded over in one corner, and when I circle around so I can get a better look, I see why.

Midvalley's got his guitar out, and he's propped up in a chair in the corner with it slung across his lap. Kind of making a show of tuning it up, because an instrument like that doesn't come cheap. Wood is the hardest thing to come by in the desert, and though they're getting pretty good at manufacturing synthetics, nothing sounds quite like the real thing. Even I can hear a difference, and I've got no sense for art.

I know Midvalley laid down a good bit of change for that axe, and he takes it with him everywhere, all sealed up in a big black case, with this goofy looking little pink plastic humidifier tucked in beside it. He bought it before all this, too; didn't even have to use blood money to pay for it. Back when he was just a man with a band.

Cassius is holding down the bar tonight. When he spots me, I can tell that he'd sooner cut off an arm then have us in his establishment one more night. He gives me a nod, and he's already pouring me a drink and pushing it across the bar with the tip of one finger.

Like it's going to kill him if he has to say even one word to me.

A little black cat that's crept in from who knows where hops up on the other end of the bar. Cassius seems glad for the excuse to put some miles between us, and he heads into the back to bring it some milk. He doesn't seem like such a bad guy. You can tell that he's lonely with all his family dead; he shouldn't be so picky about who he's friendly with. Maybe he's a praying man. If he is, then at least he has something.

I don't think Midvalley's seen me, and I don't much want him to. Once he starts playing, he won't take notice of anything, really, except for maybe Wolfwood, who's sitting so close you'd have to be dead not to see him there. I get the idea of a Muse and all, but last time I checked you didn't need your entire upper body jammed down one's throat to get a spark of inspiration.

He plays all these old songs, folk songs and drinking songs. The kinds of songs that don't make you feel dumb if you don't know them. He plays _Jesse James_ and _Hey, Jude_ and _Rye Whiskey_, and he plays _Stagger Lee_ and _Black Betty_ and _Alone and Forsaken_. And he's just getting to the second verse of _Charlotte the Harlot_, when Marlowe comes bouncing over and sits down beside me. He orders a soda, but all they've got is tonic water. So he takes one of those, and adds a long gold ribbon of cane sugar from one of the jars.

Jesus, kids.

He waves to me sheepishly. "Mr. Midvalley is sure good at that. He could do it for a living."

"He used to, you know," I tell him. "He toured for six years when he was younger. He played drums sometimes, and guitar, and he sang a little when they needed him to."

"And the…" Marlowe looks around suspiciously, and then wiggles the fingers of both hands in front of his chest, pantomiming a saxophone.

"That too. But I don't think he likes it much. He wants to keep that kind of work and our kind of work separate."

"But he's so good at it!"

"Some people are good at a lot of things, kid. Some people are only good at a few."

"I'm only good at one," Marlowe sighs. "And that's just something I was born with. I mean, I didn't have to go and learn it or anything."

"You've got some years ahead of you yet," I assure him.

"I hope so," he says with a shy smile. "But you know, I never look at my own future."

"I would have thought you'd want to know." And I still do, because, no matter what they say, nobody really likes surprises, do they? Nobody really likes waiting until Christmas morning.

"Sometimes I do," Marlowe says. "But it's not really a good idea. See, my ma, she could do the same thing. She was a little bit better at it than me, actually. Her pa knew how to do it, and his ma, and then after that no one remembers who could do it and who couldn't. Anyway, the one thing none of them ever did was try to see their own deaths. Because once they knew how they were going to die, or when, it was like a waking death. For years, sometimes, until the time finally came."

He takes a sip of his soda. If it's bothering him, talking like this, then he doesn't show it. He's rattling the story off like it's a job interview or something.

"But my ma and me lived all alone," he continues, "And I was her only kid. So one day, she decided she'd just check, to make sure nothing was going to happen to her while I was too little to go get help. And so she looked ahead, and she saw me growing up, and she saw herself real happy watching me get big. But then she saw something she didn't like. It was cancer in her belly, and it took her real slow and painful. And though I was almost going to be a man when it finally happened, she saw how sad I was. And so she made a decision, that she was going to die real quick, while I was still young enough to get over it. And so she walked over to the neighbor's house, and told them what she'd seen. And the neighbor lady, she said for my ma to put her faith in god, and that he giveth and he taketh away."

He hesitates for a second, so I ask, "Do you believe in god?"

Marlowe smiles a brilliant smile, and he says, without any hesitation, "Not anymore I don't. Because my ma, she just thanked the neighbor lady, and asked if she could get a glass of water before she walked back home. And when the neighbor lady was in the kitchen, my ma turned around and took the big Colt Army off the wall where it was mounted, and she put it to her head and she shot herself right there in the living room."

Don't get me wrong, sob stories are a dime a dozen around her. But the last thing I need is for this kid to go and start making me feel bad for him. Like he's this little lost boy, just drifting around looking for someone to replace his poor dead mother.

"What happened then?" I say.

"Nothing, really. I went to see the body when it was at the coffin maker's. Neighbor lady said it was good, because what I imagined wasn't going to be way worse than what she really looked like. But I'm not so sure about that, because when I imagined her she looked like my ma and not some piece of meat with half its head gone."

"Guess your neighbor wasn't very good with advice, was she?"

Inexplicably, he laughs, though that's got to be one of the most tactless jokes to every see the light of day. "Yeah. She really wasn't," he says. "You know, like, everything, Miss Dominique."

And I'm about to slap him silly, when all of a sudden he gets quiet. And then, without a word, he gets up and scurries to a seat further down the bar. I don't even need to look to see what's got him so spooked. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a white coattail swirl like a dust devil, and then fall still.

"Do you mind?" I say. "We were having a conversation."

There must be some mistake, because that coattail doesn't rise again, doesn't move again. He's standing next to me, standing right by me. So close we could touch. And he's not angry, not that I can see, and he's not here to ask me to risk my life.

He's just standing there. Like he actually wants to be.

"I thought you looked like you could use some rescuing," he says.

I look at him. I can't say anything, but that doesn't stop my mouth from dropping open and letting a stupid, confused bleat out. Plenty loud enough for him to hear, too.

His eyebrows draw together slightly. "Is that not the phrase?"

"It's _a_ phrase," I say. "Not one I expected to hear from you, though."

"I didn't mean to startle you," he says. And there it is again, that smile that's not really there at all. That doesn't show on his face, but hovers around him like a guardian spirit all the same.

He's all I can see. But I can hear, as if from very far away, someone picking a guitar. It's Midvalley, still playing, but winding down for the night. When his voice gets tired, he likes to play _La Malaguena_ as an instrumental. And he plays it so sweetly, that sometimes you forget where you are. And you get to think that maybe he really could be some kind of an angel.

But for an angel to show up in a town like this, he'd have to have a very poor sense of timing or an even more backwards sense of direction.

"You should listen to this song," I say, very quietly.

"Why?" Legato asks.

I shrug. I guess it's not a good enough answer for him, because he looks at me again. "I'll be retiring to my room now," he says. "You should come up soon. I think I would be very annoyed if you woke me."

He doesn't stay around long enough to see that he's left me speechless. But I still think he knows.


	18. Death Rides a Horse

**Semblance of Eden 18 ~ Death Rides a Horse**

I wait a while after Legato's gone, until Midvalley's finished playing. I start over to tell him goodnight, but before I can get there Wolfwood leans over and nuzzles a kiss against his cheek, tucking a whisper into the shell of his ear. And I know I'm too late.

I just don't see how I'm ever going to be glad for him if he keeps reminding me of how insufferably, nauseatingly happy he is.

On the way to the stairs, I ruffle Marlowe's hair and tell him not to stay up to late. But I know that with all the soda he's sucked down, he's going to be bouncing off the walls until dawn.

"Have you got a boyfriend, Miss Dominique?" he asks me brightly.

"I've got a few, I guess. Why?"

"I was just curious." He smiles.

"Come see me when you're pulling a six figure income, kid. Then we'll talk."

For some reason, that makes him giggle like a goddamn lunatic. I roll my eyes and head upstairs. It's early still, but I guess Legato must need his beauty sleep. Besides, it's not like I've ever had much of a problem dozing off when he's close to me.

I'm not the kind of girl who gives up control easily. Maybe what I've been searching for all this time is someone who knows how to take it. I'd never abide a man hitting me, and I've killed for less than that. But there is a kind of man who's so cruel, so merciless, he never even has to raise his hand to you.

Maybe that's the kind of man I like.

Legato's there at the door before I even lift my hand to knock. His coat is off again, but this time he's wearing his boots. It's such a little thing to notice, such a dumb little thing. Is he planning on running, I wonder.

"I'm a little surprised you invited me back," I say.

"Have you given me some reason not to?"

I guess I can take that as a compliment. "I don't want to get you in trouble or anything."

"So don't."

He's being pretty opaque tonight. I can't help but wonder if he's just using me. Using me more than usual, I mean. Like maybe I'm just his last chance to show a little defiance, to see if he can get away with. Can't say I'm thrilled to be caught in the middle. But I'm also not heading for the door quite yet.

I take off my hat, and hang it from one of the posts at the foot of my bed.

"I saw you go up towards the Plant today," he says after a while.

I surprise myself by not wincing. "Sure. I went," I say.

"You might have told me before taking it upon yourself to scout the area."

"It wasn't really that. I just wanted to look. I mean, it is pretty impressive when you think about it."

"Impressive like a war memorial," he says.

"I guess," I say. "I won't pretend I know all the details. About the… the batteries, you know?"

"Mortals were not meant to understand them."

"I know, I know. But I think that's partly because most of them don't really want to." I go to the mirror to brush out my hair. "Do you think about people a lot, Legato? About why they are how they are?"

"Not if I can help it," he says.

"Me too. But I really can't help it. I was just born… sensitive, I guess. Empathetic. Like if someone's rude and it seems like it's for no reason, I want to figure out the reason. There's this part of me that wants to forgive him, because I know nothing happens in a void."

"I would think that with the work you do…"

"What? That I'd be some kind of sociopath? I guess that might make sense, but it's not true. I actually kind of like people. I've just accepted what most of them don't want to admit, that we're just animals. Just exceptionally bright, exceptionally organized apes. And we all want to be enlightened, but it will never happen. Because part of being human is a thousand little prejudices, and cruelties, and malicious thoughts. All of them getting bigger as more of us come together. All of them magnified by one another. It's not that we're fundamentally bad; it's just that we can't be any better…"

He's right behind me.

I can see him in the mirror, but I couldn't until he was only a step away. My breath strangles in my throat then, as his hands come down on my shoulders.

"If they aren't so bad," he says. "Why not try to save them?"

He not choking me: it takes a second for that to sink in. He's not hurting me at all, actually. His hands are warm and soft on my shoulders. I can feel the webbing where his thumb and finger join on the sides of my neck. The tips of his fingers come together in a neat little diamond at the hollow of my throat. I stare at his hands in the mirror there, like he's just presented me with a priceless necklace.

"If I could save anything, I think I'd want it to be a really nice story. Or maybe some music. Something that really makes us out to be better than we are. But I know, no species of animal gets to live forever." My voice seems to come from a long way off. "Except cockroaches, and tortoises maybe. But we're not so gentle, or so wise. So I don't care about that. I just want to be able to say I picked a winning horse for once in my life."

He doesn't answer right away. But his hands stay where they are, heavy as judgment. Heavy as hell.

I lean my head a little, and drag my cheek over the back of his palm. "You are the winning horse, aren't you?"

I'm not sure whether he turns me to face him, or I do it on my own. The small of my back is up against the edge of the dresser, and he's really close to me. He's really, really close to me right now. If he kisses me, then all my secrets are going to flood into his mouth, just bubble over like champagne. He's going to know things he doesn't want to, like exactly what Marcus Rien's skin tastes like, exactly how he feels. Exactly how he once trusted me enough to ask me to kill Legato, kill the man behind him, too.

But he doesn't kiss me, not right away.

"Maybe I am," he says quietly. "But not for you. I wanted you to know that."

I press my palms against his chest, but not to push him away. His muscles are lean and rangy, and for a man who never seems to use his own hands when someone else's will do, he's in remarkably good shape. He must work hard on his body, but even harder on making it look like it's easy.

"I know that," I say to him softly. "I do."

That's right about when an explosion takes out most of the saloon downstairs.


	19. No Name on the Bullet

**Semblance of Eden 19 ~ No Name on the Bullet**

I'm spared pushing Legato off me. The blast almost shakes both of us off out feet.

I pull my clothes back into order on my way to the door, and I don't even think to look if he's following me or not. It's not until I'm in the hall that I realize I left the room alone. But Midvalley and Wolfwood are already stumbling out of their door, trailing coat tails and bootlaces.

"It came from downstairs!" Midvalley informs, like I'm fucking deaf or something.

On the way to the stairs, Marlowe pokes his head out of his room. I shove him back inside and tell him, "Stay down!"

Already, the boys have hit the stairwell, and a blast of gunfire greets them. They take off over the railing in opposite directions, and I see Wolfwood roll behind the bar. I can't see where Midvalley ended up. I crouch down behind a chest on the second-floor landing.

"Headcount?" I call out.

"Three!" Midvalley's voice comes back to me.

"No," Wolfwood says. "Five at least. Maybe more." Which sounds more like it. Marcus' elite agents always work in squads of six. They have the best technology money can buy, too. And they work fast. We're going to have to move if we want to keep them from getting the drop on us again.

Before I get a chance to say anything, the lights go out.

"They cut the power!" Midvalley says. He must think I'm fucking blind, too.

"Stay where you are," I say. "They have infrared goggles. They can see you clear as noon."

The only reason they haven't struck yet is because they're very thorough. They're moving forward as a squad, clearing the room. Maybe sending the civilians out. Or, if the sporadic gunfire I'm hearing from downstairs is any indication, maybe not.

"Midvalley?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm going."

There's a pause. Long enough for me to hope he's following me here.

"Be careful," he says at last.

I don't say anymore. I just open the Eye and swing out from under cover. Midvalley and I, we never were able to get the timing on this down just right, but we both work best under pressure.

From the landing of the stairs, I jump down into the main room. When I hit the floor my knees both pop like pine logs in a fire, and my ankles don't feel too steady. But the gunfire passes under me, and tears up the stairs. They must have been briefed pretty thoroughly if they knew I would try something like that. If they knew just what to do.

I still can't see for shit, but the moonlight from the front windows is giving me silhouettes. My legs feel watery, but I make them move. I cut between the overturned tables, graze my knee on a chair but don't go down. I hurdle a body that's bleeding from a hole in the throat, but it's not until much later that I realize it was poor, exhausted Cassius I stepped over.

He should be worth a few dozen years of bad luck.

I'm working on borrowed time here. Marcus' soldiers have had their reflexes and metal faculties enhanced by Plant radiation. They can't see me right now, but they're going to tune into my frequency a lot faster than the average man would.

And once they do, they're going to shoot a lot faster and a lot straighter than him, too.

It feels like forever before I catch sight of the faint red glow of infrared goggles. I shoot in that direction, and the light goes out. Now that I've found one, I know I can use their own neat formation against them. I swing a hard right, catch sight of the dead man's partner. I lift my gun to blow him away, but in the second before I do, he turns and his red round eyes fix right on me.

I pull the trigger, knowing all the time that it's too late. That they'll all see me in a moment – long before I can take cover - and I'll be caught out in the open, and I'll die feeling like an idiot.

But the next sound I hear isn't a gunshot, it's a fast brass arpeggio. The last note hits with explosive, atonal force, and a cloud of sawdust erupts from the saloon floor. The shockwave wings me in the side, flinging me off my feet. Midvalley's timing has improved some, but it seems his aim still needs a little work.

There's gunfire now, and as I fall I feel bullets hiss over the top of my head like arcs of static electricity. I hit the ground. My head snaps back, cracks against the packed dirt. I see a million swirling stars and, interspersed amongst them, incandescent muzzle flashes.

I shake it off and force myself to sit up. I force my eye open, and I'm looking down a lean black barrel.

The agent is carrying a compact automatic, small enough to shoot comfortably one-handed. He's dressed in black, a hood up over his head, pinned in place by his infrared goggles. His chest is packed in Kevlar, like a piece of meat on ice. The shooting's stopped now; he must be the last one left.

I catch all that, though all I really ought to be looking at is that gun. The one pointed at my face.

His gloved finger tenses on the trigger, and I don't wince. That's strange, since I'm certainly scared enough. If I piss myself now, at least it'll save me the trouble of doing it after I'm dead.

I'm glad I hold off, though. Because his finger tenses, but he never pulls.

His head tilts a little to the side, like he's listening to some far-off music. And it's not quite music, really, but there is a humming in the air. A low, throbbing charge. Honey-gold and invisible.

His fingers unclench, and the agent's gun clatters to the ground between my bent knees. He's making a harsh rasping sound, over and over. Low to start with, but winding up fast. The muscles in the sides of his throat are pulsing like a balloon. White foam flecks the corners of his mouth, and when his lips part just a little a torrent of blood comes rushing out.

I didn't know I was holding back a scream until it's out, echoing through the still saloon and momentarily drowning out the sounds he's making, like wet cloth through a shredder.

A fat gray snake slithers out from between his lips and falls to the floor. It uncoils, slick with silvery blood in the moonlight. I keep looking for its head, the side that bites, but it's a snake without a head. Then another lands beside it, and another. And these aren't snakes after all.

These are intestines.

The agent is retching violently now, more thick coils calling from his lips, pooling in my lap. His neck stretches unnaturally, and from between his lips slides something round and crossed with bulging veins. That's probably his stomach, but I don't know for sure.

I recognize the kidney's when they come, and the liver. And then there are some parts I can't even guess at. He's still in his feet, but his arms are limp at his sides, his shoulders rolled forward as if someone's holding him up by the scruff of the neck.

The corners of his mouth are torn jaggedly from being stretched.

He jerks once, and pukes another torrent of blood. Black, this time, and full of clots. It splashes my jeans, and I scream again, short and shrill like the blast of a horn.

The force that's keeping the agent on his feet lets go then, and he topples over backwards. The sound he makes when he hits the ground is like a canteen that's only half full.

I'm working on keeping my mouth closed. I'm less worried about screaming again then I am about the knot in my throat that I know is my last couple of meals trying to escape. In a moment, Midvalley's at my side, pulling me to my feet. He turns me away from the remains, discreetly.

"Are you okay?"

When I try to turn my head, my gaze swings wildly. What finally focuses me is at the top of the stairs. Legato is looking down at us, the yellow glow that comes into his eyes when he really turns his magic on full blast isn't even fully faded yet.

"What…?" I say. "Why…?"

I don't know what I want to ask him, and he doesn't give me a chance to figure it out. He turns away, and goes back upstairs. The shadows on the landing swallow him up. It's like one minute he's there, and the next he's gone completely.

I'd go after him, but Midvalley's got an arm around me and I think that's about all that's holding me on my feet. He's saying, over and over, without much variation on the theme, "Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't know you were there. I couldn't see you."

Which had been the point at the time.

I don't get a chance to answer right away, because then Wolfwood says, "Dominique, you should come over here."

Midvalley helps me a little, though I think I'm all right to walk now. Wolfwood's crouched down at the foot of the stairs, and he's mostly blocking the view so it's not until we're close that I see Marlowe.

Another partner, lying deflated and still in a pool of blood.


	20. Unforgiven

**Semblance of Eden 20 ~ Unforgiven**

It's almost dawn by the time I stumble back to Legato's room. I feel like shit, and I must look almost as bad. There are deep shadows cut under my eyes, and my skin feels loose around my skull.

I haven't even gotten a chance to clean the blood off. It's everywhere; it's even in my hair.

Though he takes him a long time to come when I knock, I can tell when I see him standing there in the doorway that it's not because he was asleep.

"Marlowe's dead," I say. My voice sounds like the world's quietest chainsaw.

"I know," he replies. And what I can't figure out is why his doesn't sound much better. It's dark in his room; all the lights are out, and the shutters are pulled tight as if in anticipation of the sunrise that is to come. "I suppose you'll be glad to have your room back."

My mouth comes open, as if to speak. But I don't know what I want to say, and so I just moan softly. It's like the sound most everyone makes before they topple over from sunstroke. I'm going to faint, I think. And that would almost make it better. At least then, I wouldn't be standing here in the hallway, staring at him like some kind of lovesick idiot, with him barring the way to the only place I want to be right now.

In the end, he doesn't make me say anything. It must be some grievous oversight, or part of a horrible sadistic game he's playing. But he's actually stepping aside so I can come in. He's closing the door behind us and turning the key in the lock.

And I'm just standing there in the middle of the room with my back to him, and my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth like a piece of rotten meat.

"How long has it been?" I say finally. "Hours, I guess. It took him that long just to finally die. Nick went out to get some morphine, but after all the shooting, no one would open up. So I gave the kid what was left of my laudanum, and then we just cleaned out the bar and fed him whiskey when he wasn't screaming and eventually he passed out. And then it was over. So I came here to tell you."

"I was aware."

"I guess so." I don't move to leave. All I can think, is that I don't want to leave him. But something must be wrong, something must be haywire in my head, because when those words go through my mind the emphasis is all wrong. Like he's the one who's alone right now.

"He is not pleased," Legato says at last.

When he talks like that, there's only one person he could mean.

"He already knows?"

"He knows many things. Even from far away, he sees many things."

"What's he going to do?"

"Nothing, to you. It is I who has displeased him. He doesn't expect any better from you."

I wonder if Marlowe is still the topic of conversation here. I wonder if Legato's voice really did tremble a little just then, or if it was only my imagination.

I turn around slow, taking little shuffling steps like when you're trying to get closed to a skittish dog. Maybe the light's a little different from this angle, because I can see now how exhausted his eyes are, how he's bent over a little at the waist like he's in pain. Are there bruises there on his ribs, maybe? Did Knives somehow reach out, across all those miles, all those untold vistas of sand and stars, just to hurt him? To seize him by those thoughts they always share, and shake him like a doll?

While we were downstairs, trying to get Marlowe to hurry up and give up the ghost, was he up here throwing himself around his shitty rented room? And though his lips never moved, did his eyes plead for mercy from an attacker who wasn't even there to see?

I don't want to think about it. But I do. And when I see him like that, even if it is just in my imagination, it's like I'm suddenly standing outside it all. Like I'm looking down impartially on him and on all of us.

We don't know how ridiculous we look from way up there.

That's why I start to laugh. Just staring at him across the dark room, my shoulders shaking with laughter. He doesn't say anything, but the corners of his lips slump, as if he's too tired to keep them up anymore. He's giving me this awful look, like I just sucker punched him and stole his wallet.

I don't think I want to watch this.

I wrap my arms around his waist, and he flinches as if my body's made of fire, or ice. At first, I think he's going to pull away, and I wonder if I'm brave enough to hold on to him. His muscles are all wound tight against me, and his heart is hammering in his chest. I lean my forehead against his shoulder and I can feel his pulse going a million miles an hour. For some reason, that calms me down.

"You don't like to be touched," I say. I don't know exactly when I stopped laughing, but I feel very serious now. Very grave, indeed.

"Neither do you."

"I guess you're right," I have to admit. "Not like this."

He exhales in a long, shuddering sigh, and tilts his head back a little so his chin rests on my hair. His hands settle on my hips. And I think, how easy it would be for him to clasp them at the small of my back. How easy it would be for him to push me away.

"You saved my life earlier," I say. "I completely forgot until now. Do you want me to thank you? Or should we forget it ever happened?"

"Neither, for the moment."

My ear must be in just the right place. I can feel his voice vibrating in his throat like the purr of a cat. I try to hold very still. I try not to move at all.

"You could have done it quicker," I tell him quietly. "You didn't have to make him suffer. He was just a man doing his job."

"That's not what you were thinking when he had his gun pointed at you."

"Did you do it for me?" I whisper. I close my eyes. Maybe because it makes that easier to believe. Maybe just because I feel kind of comfortable here.

He doesn't answer.

"I'm glad, if you did. I can't die now, Legato. There are still things I want to do. Not a lot, I guess. But some."

"Of course you do," he says, and he extracts himself from my arms. I let him go, because I think it'll be good enough to know he was there, even if it was just for a moment.

But I'm regretting it already.

"We should be safe here for a little while longer," I say. I'm not telling Legato, or anyone in particular. I'm just kind of laying it all out for myself to see. "He won't send another squad after us so soon. He's too smart for that. But you can bet he's already got some pros going over the combat data, and he's going to have a better strategy next time."

"Who are you talking about?"

"We should get some rest now, while we still can. He's not going to let us draw him out into the open. We'll have to go in after him, but if we do it soon he might not have all the holes boarded up yet."

"He sounds like a man of means," Legato says quietly. When I look toward him, he's already turned away from me. "A man of many talents."

I turn away, too. And I fling my coat to the floor and unbuckle my gunbelts and put them on the table next to the bed. I drop down, and I pull off my boots, but I'm too tired for the rest. Even the blood that's all over my jeans doesn't bother me much anymore. It's entirely dry now. I lay down, facing the wall, and I listen to him move around the room behind me. The way his steps fall is so entirely his own that I know I could never mistake him for another man. Never, in a hundred years.

"Just do me one favor," I say. "And I'll never ask you for anything else."

"Yes?"

"Just kill him yourself. Or, if it comes to that, let him be the one to kill you."

He's quiet for a time. I don't even hear him moving anymore. In that silence, my throat clenches tight, and I feel heat rising behind my cheeks. I'm going to cry, I think, disbelieving it even then. I already am crying. My shoulders are shaking, and my breath is coming in little shuddering gasps. By the time I realize what's going on, it's already too late to hide it from him. I don't think I would have been able to do a very good job of it anyway.

And I know what he's going to do. He's going to ask me why, in that aloof disinterested way he has of asking things like that. Mildly curious and clinical, like he's just a scientist with me under his microscope. If he does that, I think, then it'll be easy to stop loving him. Just like that, I'll do it.

He doesn't say anything right away, though. And after a minute, I feel the mattress sink slightly under his weight. When he sits beside me, I'm so startled that a sob chokes in my throat and comes out sounding like a moan.

"That's what you want?"

He touches my cheek with the tips of his fingers. His skin is very smooth and very cold, like granite.

"That's all I want," I whisper, and then the mattress depresses again. The springs creak, a tired sound, and very old, as he stretches out beside me. He's not touching me, but he's very close. My back is to him, but he's facing me, and I can feel his breath on the back of my neck.

His arm goes around my waist, and I think about how awkward he is. Like a boy who's trying for the first time to accommodate someone else in his bed. It makes me smile, and I'm glad he can't see. He might think I'm laughing at him again.

"I'll do what I can," he says quietly. "Now, shut up and go to sleep."

Mercifully, I do.


	21. The Burning Miles

**Semblance of Eden 21 ~ The Burning Miles**

Legato's still with me when I wake up. It must be close to noon, but with the curtains closed it's hard to know exactly. It's been six hours, maybe seven, and I've slept right through them. Almost like I'm not a wanted woman, like there was never a bounty on my head. Like sleep is more than just something you do so you can be ready to run again in the morning. For a night, I slept like a normal person.

Almost normal, at any rate.

His arm is still around my waist, light as the limb of a dancer. He must have slept some too, because he's moved a little, closer to me. I can feel the slight pressure of his forehead against my shoulder. I keep very still, and hope he won't notice I'm awake yet.

But nothing like that has ever worked before.

"You slept well," he says.

"Last night feels like a long time ago," I say. "It's all muted in my mind. Like when you wake up the morning after you've had a lot to drink."

"You must have been very tired."

"Yes."

He hasn't moved yet. I can feel his chest stir when he breathes, but I can't bear not being able to see him. I turn over on my side, and he loosens his hold so I can move. We're so close that his features blur together. I can only focus on one at a time. The trouble is that they're all so perfect.

"You must have though I was acting strange last night. I'm sorry, I guess."

"You always seem strange to me, Dominique."

"My thoughts were all falling over each other. I couldn't think clearly. I was exhausted."

"Shall we blame it on that, then?"

"Yes," I say instantly. But then, after a moment, "No. Because I'm awake now."

I want to kiss him on the mouth, but I lose my nerve at the last minute and only touch my lips to his cheek. I'm blushing a little when I pull back again. He's looking at me curiously. I forget that sometimes he needs the simplest concepts explained.

"I know that I'm no different from a million other girls," I say. "Lots of men think that. It's not just you. I wanted you to know that I know that already. And that I'm good at being accommodating."

"If every girl were like you, then I wouldn't need to be here at all."

That's kind of vague, as compliments go. But I know he's not prone to giving those out, so maybe it's more like it's kind of vague as statements of fact go.

He's touching my throat with his fingertips. He slips his hand under the open collar of my shirt and drags it down slowly, and each snap along the way pops like a stick of dynamite.

"Legato…?" I start to say. And then he's kissing me. His mouth is on mine, and it takes him a second to remember what to do. At first he's just breathing me in, like he could suck my soul right out and it would slide down his throat just like a raw oyster. He makes me tremble, but in a good way.

This late in the game, there are a couple of facts that cannot be disputed. One, he knows I love him. Two, he knows he can never really trust me. Add one and two, and they don't come up with anything like this. This is an imaginary number, a division by zero. We're in real theoretical territory here.

I run my hands under his shirt, and together we peel it off over his head. It looks like I was right about the bruises on his ribs last night, but by this morning they're faded to pale yellow and green. By the way he moves, I would guess that they don't hurt him anymore. We're really flying now. Unhooking all those little clasps and buttons that would seem necessary any other time, but are just annoyances right now.

It's kind of funny how gentle he is. Kind of sweet and strange. Most men are rough because they're trying to prove something to themselves. Because they think that if they possess you, they'll be strong. I don't really mind that sort of thing, though I think it's a sort of silly little gesture, like giving candy and flowers.

But here is a man who must know that he is strong, and who doesn't answer to himself so he has nothing to prove. He doesn't slap my ass or throw me around by my hair, or call me a whore or anything like that. No, he's a real gentleman. I always did wonder what one of those was like.

His body is lean and sleek as a fox. When I run my hands down his side, I can feel his ribs under a glaze of taut muscle and they're strong as the vault of a cathedral. He's busy kissing my neck, letting me feel the sharp ivory of his teeth, and I don't want to interrupt him. So I tell his left ear and a few locks of hair, "You're just so beautiful."

He doesn't say anything in reply, but he topples me onto my back and I bend beneath his hands because I'm more than willing to go wherever he says. To do whatever he wants. To suffer whatever he has in mind.

He swirls above me like a star. Just as far away, just as impossible to reach out and touch.

His hands run up under my knees, and I can see what he wants. I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him in close. He right up against me, up against the heart of me. I wonder why it seems like we've gotten here so quickly when I know that I've been waiting for years.

And what happens then, I'll never say, because in the telling it might lose some of its shine. He gave it to me; it's mine alone. I'll take it with me all the way to the grave if I want.


	22. The Great Silence

**Semblance of Eden 22 ~ The Great Silence**

I think there was always a part of me that assumed that, if I could only get here, then somehow everything would set itself right. Like maybe I was expecting him to disappoint me, or maybe it was the hunt I appreciated all along, not the hind.

It's all over now, I tell myself, only it doesn't feel over at all.

He doesn't get out of bed right away when it's over. I'm not exactly complaining, though I kind of wish he'd at least give me an excuse to go get cleaned up. Last night's blood is still in the ends of my hair, making it stiff like the bristles of a paintbrush.

Three times, I tell myself to get up and go. And three times I stay right where I am. He's not holding onto me or anything like that; hell, he's not even touching me. He's just lying over there on the other side of the bed with his head tilted towards mine so we can share the pillow. Not saying a goddamn word.

It's not like I expect pillowtalk. But I don't think we're ready for pillow-silence yet, either.

"I'm not going to get knocked up," I tell him, just to have something to say.

He doesn't reply.

"I've got a diaphragm in. You probably weren't worried. You didn't even think about it. Tough guys like you always act like it's a woman's job to take care of all that stuff, then you're shocked when something happens that you weren't planning for."

Still, nothing but silence. And I turn over and rest my head on his shoulder. "You're worried."

"Should I be?" He trails the fingers of one hand absently though my hair.

Of course he should be. As much as I'd like to imagine that Knives is out there somewhere beaming like a proud parent, or kind of shaking his head and having a chuckle at us crazy kids, I know that's not the case. But if he's not afraid, then I'm not afraid.

Except that I am.

"You tell me," I say.

"I am only human." He's staring off into the distance, maybe receiving transmissions. Maybe sending them. "I am prone to mistakes."

I sit up. He's stretched out on top of the sheets like some painting of Salome or something and my anger flares up, then sputters, then misfires. "You sure know how to talk to a lady, Legato."

He smiles, faintly.

"I'm overdo for a bath," I tell him, getting out of bed. We knocked one of the blankets to the floor at some point, and I pick it up and wrap it around myself. "Then I'm going to go make sure they're taking care of Marlowe's body all right."

"We mustn't delay for long," he says.

"Just give me an hour," I say.

He doesn't answer, so I guess he's giving me permission. I don't meet anyone in the hall on the way back to my room, and the downstairs is silent as the grave. I try not to think of how my room used to seem so cramped with two of us. Marlowe's things are still laid out on the dresser, and I look through them, thinking he might have some kind of keepsake that he'd want to be buried with. There's nothing like that, though. Just his clothes and a little tube of white cream to keep his adolescent acne at bay.

After I've cleaned up, I pack his carpetbag, throw my ruined clothes in on top, and carry it all down to the incinerator.

The bodies in the saloon have been carried away, but no one's bothered to mop up the blood. They probably won't, not for a long time. Cassius' cat peers at me from the kitchen door with wary green eyes. My first thought is to go catch it, but I know it won't let me near. It'll find its way out eventually. And once it's loose, who knows where it will turn up.

The coffinmaker's shop is pretty quiet when I get there. I ask where the bodies from the saloon are, and he shifts his cigarette into the corner of his mouth as if he's going to say something, then just jerks his thumb toward the back room of the shop.

I go, and close the door between us. But then I hesitate. I don't know why I expected I'd be alone here, but I did. Seeing him rattles me a little.

Wolfwood glances over his shoulder, and when he sees me his eyes skate away guiltily.

"Sorry, Patch. I'll clear out."

"It's all right," I hear myself telling him. "You've got as much of a right to see him as I do. Maybe more."

I cross the room and stand beside him. We look down at Marlowe's body. I pat his hand, which is stiff and cold. "I've never seen one that looked asleep," I say.

"Me neither."

"I didn't know him very well. Maybe nobody did. He was a weird kid; I can't imagine he had too many friends. That makes it better, right? It's not like he's going to know when no one comes to his funeral."

Wolfwood doesn't answer. I guess he probably thinks the opposite.

"Is there something you need to do? Last Rites?"

He shakes his head. "That's for priests. I'm just a travelling preacher. I'm not ordained or anything."

"Maybe you could just say a few words, then."

He shrugs. "I didn't know him any better than you."

"I'm no good at this sort of thing…"

He sighs, and I think for a second he's not going to go through with it after all. But then he closes his eyes and bows his head and recites By the Oasis of Babylon without a hitch or a halt. And he ends it saying, "…if I forget you, o my homefire, may my right hand forget the way of the gun. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, my greatest joy."

And for a second, I almost forget that he's not really a very good preacher. For a second, I think he might be one of the best ones around.

"What was that?" I ask him.

He clears his throat, and smiles an apologetic smile. "Sorry. It just kind of popped into my head. It's not very good for a funeral. Let me try again."

"No, wait."

"The Lord is my shepherd," he starts up. "I shall not want."

"Nick…"

"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me…"

"Nick, it was fine!"

I didn't mean to say it so loud. I know I startled him. "It was good," I tell him. "I liked the other one."

It takes a while for him to work up to it, but eventually he smiles. "I'm glad," he says, and I think he means it. "There's something in that book for everyone. That's what I believe, at least."

"You mean, it tells you what you want to hear?"

"Maybe." He shrugs. "When I got sick of my dad knocking me around, I picked up a gun. When I got sick of feeling guilty over it, I picked up a bottle. When I got sick of killing myself that way, I picked up a Bible, and it made me feel hopeful again. I guess I've got a knack for finding the right tool to get the job done."

"Is that all we need, Nick?"

"What? The right tool? It does help."

"Hope, I mean."

He lets out a long, sighing breath. The day's not cool, and there's a lot of death in this one little room. It's starting to get so you can smell it. And when, I wonder, did we become immune? A few drinks will only make us guard our secrets more closely; it takes a funeral to really loosen our tongues.

"I didn't mean to present myself as an expert on the topic," he says to me. "I don't think it's all we need. But it helps."

"Okay," I say. "I understand that."

"Do you want some time alone? To maybe say goodbye?"

"No. I don't need to. We should get back soon."

We leave together, and once we're outside he casually takes my arm, like he's escorting me. It's quiet compared to yesterday, but the street isn't empty. Surely everyone has heard by now. They've gotten some sanitized version of what happened at the saloon. I can picture Marcus, awakened before dawn, sitting on the edge of his bed in flannel pajamas and reading an early draft of the newspaper story. Giving it his seal of approval.

I don't even care to know what kind of monstrous light it casts us in. It doesn't even interest me anymore. Because all of us are worse than any of us could ever imagine, and all of us are better, too. And all of us have been down so long we don't know up anymore, but still, it's time I told the truth.

It's time, I think, that I came clean.


	23. Four of the Apocalypse

**Semblance of Eden 23 ~ Four of the Apocalypse**

When we get back, Legato's waiting for us. He's righted one of the chairs that was knocked over the night before, and he's sitting at one of the tables. Just kind of staring off into space, like maybe he's listening, or thinking about something. Cassius' cat has crept out of the kitchen, and it's sitting on the table with its chin on its paws and its tail swishing.

It hears us come in, and it jumps down and saunters back behind the bullet-riddled bar, where it can peep at us in safety.

Legato, too, straightens a little, and turns to glance at the clock hanging over the piano.

"I'm not late," I say, taking the seat across from him without asking. There was a time when no one would have been so bold, and perhaps I least of all. Wolfwood knows this, and so I make an effort to avoid his eyes.

"So I see. It seemed like longer."

Wolfwood's leaving us alone. I guess maybe we both have that effect on people, so you can't accuse us of having nothing in common. He finds the corner Midvalley's hiding out in, and sits down at his side.

After he's gone, Legato looks at me with eyes as yellow as disease. "He's getting impatient."

"He's not the only one," I say. "Listen, this city's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here."

"I understand. Then you will not object to—"

"To a shootout? No. I'll just go back to wondering what took you so long to get around to it."

"You were the one who warned me to use caution."

"I just didn't think you'd listen."

"Have I not listened to you well so far, Dominique?"

He folds his hands neatly on the table, like he expects a reply. I guess I know what the answer is, but it makes me blush when I think about it.

"It's like I told you," I say instead. "He's got an apartment in the Plant. He's got everything he needs. He's not going to come out anytime soon. If you want him that bad, we're going to have to go in and get him."

"Is that a problem?"

I have to think about it. "I don't know what Marcus is capable of. Not exactly. But I know what we can do. You've already lost one gunman. You might lose another; you might lose two. But we can take him, if you give the word. Between the three of us…"

"Four."

"Excuse me?"

"The four of us."

I just stare at him for second. Legato has a lot of talents, but he doesn't like to show off. He won't get his hands dirty if he can help it. I've never known him to wade into the heart of things if he doesn't have to.

"You seem surprised," he says. "But you are without a partner for the moment. Did you really think I would trust you alone in there? With all that history you never talk about?"

"I suppose that's fair."

Yeah, all that history. Reaching up now like the skeleton hand of a body you thought you buried deep enough. Clutching at your coattails, trying to trip you up right when you finally know which direction your headed.

"Perhaps there is something you'd like to tell me," Legato says. "In case there isn't another chance."

Not tell him, exactly. Get off my chest is more like it.

"Nothing you haven't figured out already. I used to work for the Rien family. It was way back. Before I even met Midvalley; a long time before I met you. After the experiments on my eye were successful, I figured I kind of owed them for footing the bill. But one day, I decided my debts were square, and I didn't go back. He knows me though. Marcus does. I'm sure he'll remember me."

I don't even know if Legato believes me. I don't even know anymore if he'd care if her knew I was lying. "I suppose you two were close," he says

Sometimes, I swear, he can be so passive-aggressive. "We were fucking, if that's what you're asking. But we were just kids. It wasn't that big a deal."

So much for coming clean, I guess.

"Then let's not make it a big deal," Legato says, and he stands up. As soon as he moves, Midvalley is on his feet. His eyes are both weary and wary when he looks at me. I try to smile, and he glances away quick.

"Sir?" he says.

"I think we've been idle long enough," Legato says. "Dominique will show us the best way in."

Which I guess would have to be the front door. We walk down Main Street, and don't run into any trouble, but I know we're being watched. Every second floor window with curtains drawn stares like an unblinking eye. There's a "No Guns Allowed, By City Ordinance" sign outside the Plant, with a few bullet holes knocked in it by kids taking pot shots. We make it past the sign, and across the dusty maintenance yard without trouble.

"Maybe he's packed up and gotten out of Dodge," Midvalley says.

"No," I tell him. "He's in there. There's an ambush somewhere in there, too, and we're going to have to walk right through it."

"This guy had better be one mean motherfucker," Wolfwood sighs. "We're going to a hell of a lot of trouble."

Legato, he doesn't say much of anything. But he keeps looking around like this is all new to him, like he might if we were on vacation or something. Like he's just here to see the sights.

Inside, the blond at the front desk is wearing the same brown corduroy suit she was when I last saw her, only this time she has on a fresh blouse. She's crying pretty hard, and the tears are all mixed up in her mascara. And I think, Christ, Marcus must have gotten to her too. She loves him, clear as day. The least he could do is buy her some decent clothes.

"Wait," I say. And I go toward her alone. When I brush my coat back enough that she can see the gun at my belt, she flinches.

"Listen…" I start to tell her.

"He's in his office," she blurts out. She's looking at me with this shocked hatred, the kind of look that people who've never thought about killing someone before get when they've suddenly got a reason to. "The elevators are locked down. Those stairs will take you up to nine. You'll have to take the maintenance stairs from there."

"You've been real helpful."

"He told me to tell you that. Bitch." She practically spits the words.

"You got lunch?" I say. "It's about time you took it, don't you think? Just get down behind the desk and don't come out until your hour's up, okay?"

She kind of screams, real low and throaty, like a cornered cat. All of hell is in her eyes. Then she kneels down behind the desk and I hear her sobbing.

"Up the stairs," I say. "After you gentlemen."

And Legato says, "No. You go first. Take point, as they say."

"Boss," Midvalley says. "I'm always point."

"Yes, but at the moment I don't mind having you at my back."

Jesus, I wasn't planning on shooting him in the back or anything, but those plans could change if he keeps this up. Midvalley's giving me this wincing, sympathetic look. I think I might shoot him too, just for good measure.

"It's fine," I say. "The boss knows best, doesn't he?"


	24. The Big Gundown

**Semblance of Eden 24 ~ The Big Gundown**

It goes pretty much like I expected; we run into the first hint of trouble on the ninth floor. I'm on point with my gun drawn to my shoulder, and Midvalley's right behind me. I can hear him dry-clicking the keys on his saxophone, like maybe they're going through the motions of a familiar song.

We're standing at the bottom of the last flight of stairs, and at the top is the kind of sliding metallic door that you see all the time when you're dealing with the Old Technology.

"We have to go up three more after this one," I say. "Midvalley, give us some cover while we get over to the other staircase."

And I look at him to see what he thinks, because I'm not used to this whole leadership thing. When he gives orders, he makes it look easy, and so there are all kinds of things I've never thought of before. Like, oh god, oh god, oh god… what if I get him killed? What if I get us all just fucking killed?

Don't even get me started on what's going to happen when we get up to the twelfth floor. That, I definitely haven't thought about yet.

What I need is a few minutes to catch my breath. If I just had some time to think, I know I could have everything figured out, but it looks like even that is going to have to wait. Because I'm about halfway up the stairs now, and the door at the top slides open and a grenade rolls down to land between my feet.

There's a second when nobody moves, then everyone moves at once.

Midvalley brings his horn up to his lips, and I know that in a second his fingers will fly through the notes that weave a barrier in the air in front of him. But I don't wait around to hear. I'm already running forward, taking the last stairs three at a time. I'm at the landing when the grenade goes off, and I feel the heat on my back. A hot hand shoves me in the back, and the door swings open under my weight. I tap the eye open as I fall to buy myself some time, and as soon as I hit the carpet I'm already scrambling for cover.

If there's shooting, I can't hear it. My ears are still ringing from the blast, and the skin on my back is numb and tingling. I lost my hat somewhere along the way, and without it my hair's everywhere I don't want it to be. It smells singed.

The ninth floor is one of the many abandoned control rooms in the Plant, and it's lined with panels of machinery that no one knows how to use anymore. I roll behind one, and draw my gun.

I glance around the corner; there's smoke billowing from the door that leads to the stairs, and no sign of Midvalley and Wolfwood. Or that creep who's calling himself my partner, either. Used to be I liked to work alone, but when I realize that I'm cut off, my heart leaps into my throat. I can taste it there, amidst the blood and the bitter smell of burning carpet.

There's no shooting, which means I made it back here without being seen. And right there, not ten feet from where I'm crouched, is the door to the maintenance stairs. There's a red light over it, so I can see it even through the smoke.

If I can just make it through that door, then everything could change. I know there's no guarantee it will be for the better, but I'm already gathering my legs under me and preparing to move. I push off from behind the panel, keeping my head down. There's a shout, and then a shot and I feel my left leg jerk at a strange angle.

But the door is already yielding under my hand, spilling me into the stairwell. A few bullets hit the door behind me, but they're harmless. I barely even hear them.

I rip off my kerchief and wrap it around the hole in my thigh. The bullet's still in there somewhere, but it's not bleeding much, everything considered, and when I try to rest my weight on that leg it takes it without much complaining.

I lean against the railing on the way up.

I'd been looking for some quiet time to get my thoughts in order, and I guess this is the closest I'm going to get. But the distance to Marcus' floor is dropping away quickly, and I'm not any closer to figuring out what I'm going to do once I get there. But I've got a gun in my hand, and an ache in my left leg that's making me itchy to end this. And I don't have Legato breathing down my goddamn neck at the moment, so I'd say I'm doing better than I have been.

Someone follows me through the door, and I whip around and shoot before I can even get a good bead on who it is. One of Marcus' guards catches the bullet between the eyes and he flies back and splatters the wall on his way down. After that, I clatter up those stairs like there are hounds on my heels.

By the time I make the twelfth floor, my leg is hurting something bad. I press a hand against the wall to keep my balance, and bite my lip. Because I don't have much further to go.

I don't look so good, I guess. Even back in the old days, when I wore my bruises like a fashion statement and every time I needed stitches I walked around for days afterwards waiting for someone to ask why I was limping… even then, I always tried to clean up a little before I let Marcus see me.

But it's not like he doesn't know how much sweat and blood can come out of a human body. It's not like he doesn't know what pain looks like. He took up where his father left off, after all, and he should be well acquainted with both by now.

The handle to his office door turns easily in my hand. It's not locked. When I step inside, he's sitting at his desk with his hands steepled in front of him and his head tilted a little to the side. Like he's listening to a symphony or something.

But he's not. He's only listening to gunfire from downstairs.

He looks up at me when I come in, and he smiles a polite and quizzical smile. Like I'm gate crashing his baby shower or something. Like I just showed up on his doorstep unannounced, with enough luggage to last three months and an eye trained on his guest room.

He'll be surprised, then. I'm not planning to stay long at all.


	25. El Topo

**Semblance of Eden 25 ~ El Topo**

He could at least be scared. He could at least have the decency to pretend to be a little bit scared. But instead, he just smiles that dazzling smile at me, and he says, "My goodness. Did you have a rough day?"

And beneath the icy weight of his blue eyes, my gun hand gets heavy and I let it fall to my side. "Yeah," I croak.

"You're going to want a doctor to look at that leg, I believe. Fortunately, I have one on hand just for emergencies like this. If you'll wait until the commotion downstairs dies down, I'll be happy to buzz him up for you…"

"Marcus."

"Yes, Dominique?"

"What the hell are you still doing here?"

He tilts his head queerly to the side, and then he laughs. "Why you silly girl. I was waiting here for you to lead my would-be assassins into an ambush. A task which you have accomplished admirably, I would like to add. I can see now why Professor Darius picked you for his little spy game."

"They're going to kill you. They want you dead, Marcus."

He shrugs. "Well, I suppose they have their reasons. Luckily, you're here to protect me now, isn't that so?"

"You're not listening…"

"I am listening perfectly, Dominique!" he snaps. He's up from his desk in an instant, and I flinch back. I actually fucking flinch, like he's going to hit me or something. He'd better not hit me. I'm the only friend he's got.

"I think you underestimate my intelligence," he says. "I've seen the files that Professor Darius tried to keep hidden from me. He wanted them burned before he died, but I couldn't let that happen. Because that creature, the one they call Knives, that's big news. News like that, it's everyone's business."

"He was trying to protect people. He knew what would happen if word got out…"

"Yes," Marcus says. "A panic, I suppose. Most people are quite unreasonable. Not like you, Dominique. Or me. We know what to do with information like that. We turn it to our advantage."

"You don't understand. He's not just a power source for you to harness. He's alive. He's smart as hell, and he's dangerous."

"So they said about the Plants. But my ancestors were not afraid. They knew that we were human, and so we were exceptional. And it was our destiny to reign over everything on earth and amongst the stars. So while the greatest minds of their generation were cowering behind Geiger counters and peer reviewed journals, they found a way to cage those batteries, and harness them, and tame them. And look at what it's gotten us."

And I think of the desert out there, and how it doesn't even take a thing like that to make you realize you're insignificant. "Yeah," I say. "Just look."

Marcus laughs cheerfully. "Don't say that. Don't pretend you think that just anyone deserves what I have. Good things," he says, tapping his hand on the oak desk, "You have to earn. Or you have to take. And I'm going to take the crown right from Knives' head. I'm going to take the throne right out from under him."

"Darius knew the only thing we could do was kill him. Every moment we leave him alive is toxic to us."

"Darius lacked ambition. And, while his little assassination attempts against the creature were cute, I couldn't let them go on. Even a tiny yapping dog can land a lucky bite once in a while."

My eyes narrow. "Did you kill Darius?"

He shrugs. "Looks like you caught me. You're just too clever for me, my dear. I know you two were close, but don't try to tell me he was like a father to you or anything like that. He used you, and you know it as well as I do. When we brought you in from the desert and he saw that your eye had been damaged by the sand, he didn't even wait to see if they could fix it before starting injections of the Plant extract. You probably don't even remember, do you?"

"I remember," I say. But I'm not so sure.

"I didn't like it, Dominique. Even then. I respected you too much."

"Oh, shut up, Marcus."

"In fact, I still respect you. You've played a hell of a game, and even I can't figure out how much of it was skill and how much was luck. I know, deep down, you're still my girl. So why don't you come over here and wait with me, and once the shooting stops we'll go downstairs and I'll let you pump a few rounds into Legato's corpse?"

"I'm not going to help you get us all killed. He never would have noticed you here if you hadn't taken your father's experiments as far as you have. You've made so many fucking mutants that you can't even keep track of them anymore, can you?"

"I'll have you know, I have a very thorough records department, and quarterly audits. We're advancing by leaps and bounds here. If that were not the case, I would never have begun a regimen of Plant injections on myself."

I don't even see his hand move, he's so fast. Just one minute it's there at his side, the next it's stretched out towards me and there's a gun pointed at my face. A big heavy Colt revolver with sandalwood grips and muzzle that looks like it could blow a hole in the sun.

"Finest handgun ever made," Marcus says. And he laughs. "Held by one of the finest gunmen science can create. It feels just right in my hand, like an extension of my arm. So don't get any ideas, Dominique, because I never miss anymore. I never hesitate. I'm never too slow. And before you get any notions in your pretty little head about Legato and all the gory things he'll do to me, you should know that I've also had my central nervous system reinforced. Imagine, if you will, a green sheathe that fits neatly around brainstem and spinal column, and keeps my faculties well under my control."

"Gross."

"And yet, if this is what we can do with the batteries, imagine what we will be able to accomplish if we get a purer sample. One that is more compatible with human DNA. That's why I can't let you kill the creature. I'll go quite a long ways to stop that from happening. So, please, don't make me do anything I'll regret."

That gun in my face is making it hard to disagree, and it's not like I owe Marcus anything. It's not like it's my responsibility to make sure he doesn't go plunging headfirst into Knives' open jaws. And if I do what he says, at least I'll have a chance to get off this bum leg. But it kills me, you know? It really fucking kills me that he gets his way all the time.

I guess I'm probably about to let him shoot me out of spite, but just then there's a little sound, and the door opens. I don't dare let Marcus out of my sights, but I can see a little out of the corner of my eye.

I can see enough to know it's Legato.


	26. The Furies

**Semblance of Eden 26 ~ The Furies**

Marcus' grip on the pistol doesn't waver, not even a little. He doesn't look away from me, either, but when he smiles, you can tell it's meant for Legato. You can tell it's genuine, too. "You must be Mr. Bluesummers. I'm Marcus Rien. I've heard a lot about you, and I can't tell you how nice it is to finally be able to put a face to the name."

Legato doesn't seem impressed. "Have you gotten yourself into a bit of a tight spot, Dominique?"

"Nothing I can't handle."

Marcus sighs, more bored than anything. "Dominique and I are old friends. We were just discussing her current business venture. Sort of a project she's been working on for a mutual acquaintance of ours."

I know I'm pretty good under pressure, but there's only so much I can take before I crack. "Don't listen to him, Legato." My voice sounds shrill. "He's going to lie to you. He's a good liar…"

Before I know it, I'm trapped between two annoyed looks. Christ, having these two in the same room, I suddenly realize how alike they really are. At this very moment, in an alternate universe, their doppelgangers are going dutch on martinis and manicures and holding hands under the table.

"I can see I've piqued your interest," Marcus continues, like I didn't say anything at all. "You see, Dominique has a unique talent, as I'm sure you know. She's quite handy in a pinch. There's no one alive who she can't get the drop on. Whether it's a man, or… something else. Wouldn't you agree?"

Legato's eyes slide over me. His mind is always a strong presence, but this is the first time I've realized that you can actually feel him thinking. "One would have to know a great deal about this "something else" before they could be certain."

Marcus just laughs. "Believe me, I know. So let's drop the silly intrigue act. Knives sent you here to kill me because he disapproves of my experiments. Scientific progress has always had an enemy in fanatics of every stripe."

"Fanatic or not, your time here is short, Marcus Rien. You and every human like you."

"It may be brief," Marcus says, "But that doesn't mean I don't have plenty of time to tell you about your trusted Lieutenant. Even a man like you must appreciate gossip."

"Marcus!" I snap.

"Yes, dear? Do make it quick. You heard Mr. Bluesummers, we're not long for this world."

"Don't talk about me like I'm not here."

"My apologies. Perhaps you would rather tell him the story?"

I'm still staring down the barrel of his Colt, but a bullet is only the second most unforgiving thing in the room. The first is still standing in the doorway, staring at my back, filling up the place with the heat coming off his yellow eyes.

"Legato, listen," I say. "It's not Midvalley's fault, so I don't want you taking it out on him. He didn't know anything about it, and he was always so faithful to you it made me want to fucking puke."

"About what, Dominique?" he says. Very even, very measured.

"They sent me to kill Knives. When Professor Darius told me about him, and what he wanted to do, then what was I supposed to say? I couldn't just say no. So I took the job. And it's a good thing I never met him, Legato. It's a damn good thing. Because I was ready to take the shot, no matter what it cost me."

I hear him take in a long, slow breath. "I see. I might have guessed as much."

"But you didn't," I say. "Just remember that."

"No one ever accused you of not doing your job well," Marcus says. "And I'm glad we got that all out in the open. Because now—"

"What about the experiments?" Legato cuts him off. "The ones on human children. How long have they been going on?"

"Long enough," I say. "Long enough for you to have been one of them, if that's what you're asking. I don't know what Knives told you, but you're not divine. You're not some kind of prophet or anything. You're just like me. You didn't have anything to lose, and you wandered into the wrong town."

Marcus nods gravely, like a sympathetic doctor. "It's true, Mr. Bluesummers. You were one of my father's first success stories. But it was when we were transporting you to a more secure facility that bandits took the caravan. We lost track of you for a while, and my father feared the worst. But here you are, come back home just a few years too late to meet the man who made you what you are. Still, though, let's be glad we had a chance to become acquainted. You're really like a brother to me, when you think about it."

"Don't call me that," Legato says.

"I can see you're disturbed by the news. Heavens, I wonder why? Perhaps Dominique is right, and you really did think there was something spiritual about you." He laughs. "Some celestial trick. But no. No, you're cobbled together from blood and bone just like the rest of us."

He reaches for the top drawer of his desk. "I have your file right here, as a matter of fact…"

"Leave it be!" For a second, the air in the room gets hot, and I can hear his power fill the room like the buzzing of a cloud of gnats. Marcus freezes where he is, and I wince in anticipation of what's to come.

Marcus shakes his head, and he laughs. "Oh, it sort of tickles. I'm afraid it won't feel nearly as nice when I put a bullet in you, Mr. Bluesummers. But if you try that little trick again, I may be forced to."

This time, I do risk a glance back at him. I don't expect to see him looking utterly bewildered. Like someone switched all the street signs, and now he's hopelessly lost.

"Legato…" I murmur. He doesn't look at me. His eyes are fixed on the carpet.

"I suppose that's that," Marcus says. "Dominique, would you do me the honor of executing Mr. Bluesummers? It has been a pleasant meeting, but I think it's time we brought things to a close."

When I hesitate, Marcus sighs. "You don't have much of a choice, do you? He knows the truth now. He'll kill you if I don't. You have to come back to me, Dominique. It's your only option. But I want you to do this one thing for me, just so I know we're on the same page."

"All right!" At some point, I pressed my hands to my ears to keep him out. "I'll do it! Just stop talking! Both of you, stop talking about me like that. I worked my ass off for you two, and I'm not going to let you stand there talking about me like I'm some kind of machine. Like I'm just here for you to use until I'm gone."

My gun's in my hand now, and I stomp over to Legato and jam it up under his chin. I force his head back so he has to meet my gaze. His eyes flash, but I guess with Marcus watching, he doesn't want to try to pull one over on me.

"You know," I tell him. "You're still not the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Hell, you barely even crack the top ten."

I cup his cheek with my free hand, and I stand up on my toes. He lets me kiss him without much of a fuss, and it still makes me feel a little lightheaded. Slowly, his hand goes to tangle in my hair. It rests there, against the nape of my neck.

Marcus clears his throat. "Any day now, darling."

"Ready?" I say, the word muffled by his mouth.

I thumb back the hammer of my gun. I'm feeling pretty good now.

_Ready._

The word is there, rolling around in my mind where there wasn't anything a second ago. It doesn't sound like his voice, but it feels like his hands. Like he's taking the tip of one finger and traced letters on my skin.

The hand that's up under my hair drifts back, and he trips the switch on my eye patch. I grab the collar of his white coat in both hands, and I reel back on my good leg and pull him down. He lands on top of me, and Marcus empties four chambers into the empty doorway where we stood a moment ago.

I kick Legato off, and by the time I turn around Marcus is already scrambling behind the desk for cover. I squeeze off one shot, and it catches him in the back. I can tell from the noise he makes when he hits the ground that it wasn't a killing shot, and in a way I'm glad. I don't want to have to do it. For once, just this once, Legato can clean up his own mess. He can know what it's like to really get his hands good and dirty.

But he's still stretched out on the floor behind me, taking his sweet time getting up. And Marcus is moaning and gasping from behind the desk. I sigh, and cock my gun. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. You can just forget any promises I managed to extract from Legato. That wasn't chivalry, honey. He was just trying to get laid.

I circle round to the other side of the desk and turn my head so I'm looking at him a little askew so I don't have to see his eyes. And I blow Marcus' pretty little head into confetti. Hell, it isn't any harder than any other time.

I whip around, and I catch Legato in my sights as he's picking himself up off the carpet.

"Don't think I forgot about you," I say. "You stay right there."

If he thinks I'm going to let him kill me here, he's got another thing coming. No, not in this office, my body stretched out beside Marcus' like, in the end, I forgave him or something. No, I'm not going to make it that easy for him.

I flip open the Eye and then I run.


	27. Once Upon a Time in the West

**Semblance of Eden 27 ~ High Plains Drifter**

I guess I must have been more shaken up then I thought. All those stairs between me and the way out of here, and I took them without even feeling my bum leg. It was adrenaline, or something. But I think I've pushed my luck and my weary body about as far as they're both willing to go. I'm not in much pain, but my muscles are starting to lock up. My left leg is pretty much useless, more of a dead weight than anything.

If I were an animal, I'd gnaw it off. You hear about them doing that, but what they never tell you is whether any of them live long afterwards, or if they just die free of the trap.

I guess at this point, that's the best I can hope for. And I remember a place. Somewhere Marcus used to take me sometimes, when he was in a good mood.

It's behind the Plant, a sandstone ridge. And on the other side, there's nothing but open desert, dotted with buttes and red rock spires. I think, maybe if I can make it there then I'll have some cover.

I wouldn't stand a chance with my leg like it is, except that some years ago public works came through and carved a footpath into the ridge, and even set up a handrail along the side. If I make it, it'll be a hell of a thing. Even if I don't, it'll be better then standing here and twiddling my thumbs while I wait for Legato to catch up to me.

He must be plenty mad. I guess I'd be mad too, if I were him.

I head for the ridge, my boots leaving uneven tracks in the sand behind me. The left is one long, unbroken line. I'm practically dragging it by now.

I stumble onto the trail, and grip the rail tight in both hands. It's been painted white to keep it from getting too hot in the sun, but it doesn't really work. My palms blister almost instantly, but I can't let go. I rest most of my weight against the rail, and start to drag myself up. If I remember right, a lot of runners used this trail for endurance training. But hell, I was never a marathoner. I couldn't keep up with them even when I was five years younger and smoked a pack less a day.

You know, it's really a lot steeper than I remember.

I don't even make it a quarter to the top. Thirty feet up, there's a plateau, and the side of the trail the mountain breaks off sharply and you can see out over the valley.

That's where I collapse.

I go over like a ton of bricks. I mean, I really eat dirt.

I drag myself off the trail and use the limb of a Joshua tree to haul myself up. I hug it in both arms, and pant for breath and see big dark spots swimming in front of my eyes. My left boot is full of blood. It's dripping slowly from the toe, making a small red crater in the sand.

But you know? You know, it's really beautiful up here.

The first sun is just setting, and the horizon is all rusty and red. It makes the shadows of the rock formations stretch long and strange across the valley. Those delicate spires and funny mitten-shaped buttes, all stretched out, like hands beckoning me forward.

I never really noticed before. Maybe it's something you only notice when you're alone.

I could jump, I guess. I'd be doing it out of spite. Just so I'd be dying on my terms, so I wouldn't let Legato have the pleasure of it. But when I lean forward a little and peer over the edge, my stomach recoils and my arms tighten convulsively on the Joshua limb.

So maybe I'm a coward after all.

And all at once, I know I'm not alone anymore. It goes through me like a jolt, the realization that someone's watching my back. I just hug the Joshua a little tighter, and I laugh real low. "Marlowe said you'd be here. I mean, he told me this was going to happen."

He doesn't say anything, but he comes forward a step. I hear his clothes rustling.

"I was thinking about going over the side, but I can't do it myself. Do you think you could help me out? I mean, you did drop the ball on killing Marcus, right? So you kind of owe me a favor."

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to keep my promise to you, Dominique."

I turn around, real slow. I'm not so steady right now, and I might end up pitching over the cliff whether I want to or not. I look at him there, in the fading light, with the shadow of the Joshua tree painted over his face like a mourning woman's veil.

"Are you okay?" I ask weakly.

He's quiet, looking at me kind of strangely, like he can't figure out why I'd ask that.

"Guess it wasn't what you wanted to hear," I say. "That you're just a man. You probably hoped it'd be something better than that."

"I don't remember a lot of my past," he says, very carefully. Like I don't know what that means. There's only one reason people forget things like that, and that's because they don't want to remember.

"I guess now you know a little bit more." It's hard to feel too sorry, not for him.

"Listen," I say. "It was all true. Everything I said in there. They sent me to kill Knives, and I probably could have done it, if I'd had the chance. Did you know that? Did he? Is that why I never met him?"

"I didn't know," Legato says. "I never knew anything about you with any certainty. I know now, though. A few things, at least."

"That's all right. I don't mind. Before you kill me, will you just tell me one thing? Midvalley…?"

"He's fine," Legato says. "They both are. No worse for the wear than you are. And I never said I was going to kill you."

"Don't play with me, Legato. I hate that. Just get it over with."

He comes forward, and I back off. My heel goes over the edge of the cliff, and the rest of me would probably have followed after it, except that he hurries the last few steps and catches me around the waist before I can lose my balance. He's strong, I think. Strong enough to hold me, and so I let my fingers uncurl from that reliable Joshua tree, and I hook them in the collar of his coat instead.

"What are you doing?" I say.

"You're upset."

He kisses me then, and it's a pretty messy affair. I'm still panting for breath, for one thing. It was about the last thing I was expecting from him, for another. But when I lean back, I guess he's smiling at me a little. The corners of his mouth are bunched up and tight, but the rest of his expression is soft. Even his eyes, there's something gentle there.

"It's pretty up here, isn't it?" I murmur.

"It's fine," he says.

"Wish I could stay here and watch the suns go down…"

"With your leg in that condition, you'd be lucky to live that long."

"Oh." I look down, like I'm noticing it for the first time. "I guess it is kind of a wreck. Can you help me walk?"

"Shall I carry you?"

"Maybe," I say. That's a pretty tempting proposal. But if he's really not going to kill me, then I still have reputation to uphold. Yeah, I still have something to protect. "Maybe in a while. Let's see how I manage."

So he puts an arm around my waist, and tugs one of mine over his shoulders. We start down the path together, one step at a time. Taking it slow. There's no rush, you know?

And after a while he says, "You gave me quite the chase getting up here."

"How do you think I felt?"

"Where were you running?" he asks me. When I stumble, he just digs his heels in and waits for me to get my balance again.

"I don't know," I say. "I didn't know where I was going. But I do now."

"Is that so?"

He sounds only mildly curious, but I know he wants me to explain. I'm getting good at reading all his little variations. But I don't answer; I just shake my head, and pretend I'm too out of breath to talk.

Let him think on that one for a while.

~End


End file.
